Saturday, September 30, 2006

Punjabi antenna
Melodious moments
Randeep Wadehra

A still from Vichchodyan Dee Agg

Long back one had watched a music video Vichchodyan Dee Agg sung by Ramandeep. One was impressed with its good lyrics, music and beautiful rural scenes. You seldom get to hear good music nowadays. Good lyrics are rarer still. The accompanying video is seldom relevant to the theme. You get to hear a lot of energetic compositions like Mundyan vich nit khadkay gandasi tere nau dee. The occasional ballads or romantic songs are generally half-baked. Therefore it was a pleasure to hear Phul kadd dee sajna varga, suyee naal gallan kardi`85. It touched one’s heart strings with some good poetry, as one watched entranced the idyllic scenario unfolding wherein a Punjabi lass goes about her household chores lost in the thoughts of her dream lover. The lyrics conjured up a beautiful village scene with wistful love saturating the air. One could not get the name of the singer but his voice sent one into a melodious reverie.

The idiot box has a huge potential to purvey a wide range of humour: the rustic and the urbane, the topical and the timeless as well as the specific and the general. Unfortunately what we see is either poor quality rustic or loud humour. For example, the other day Jaggi 420 Not Out (MH1) dealt with the Prince episode, albeit belatedly. It failed to evoke laughter, perhaps because it was the child that was targeted when it should have been the media and the politician. After all Prince’s fall into the deep hole was accidental and not a money-spinning stunt. It was the media that had turned it into a tamasha and the politician stepped in to garner brownie points with the floating vote bank.

Heavy, incessant verbiage doesn’t become an anchor. Satinder Satti appears to be innocent of this maxim. One realised this while watching the Dehradun and Kanpur episodes of Miss Zee Punjabi 2006. In her part Punjabi, part English intro she happily pelted us with verse and worse while telling us about what each contestant aspired to be in her life. Wonder why the contestants weren’t allowed to speak for themselves. The talent rounds disappointed as the clips were too short for one to appreciate each presentation. Was it a vote of no confidence in the available talent, or was it an attempt to provide maximum footage to the anchor? If the latter was the case, verbosity is certainly not a virtue.