|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Channel surfer
But Satyamev Jayate is also a Sanskrit aphorism, which is taken with fistfuls of salt and dollops of cynicism today. After a long battle of attrition, truth’s triumph over falsehood invariably turns out to be symbolic and pyrrhic. Witness the three women in Satyamev Jayate’s inaugural episode of May 6: Amisha Yagnik, Parveen Khan and Mitu Khurana. The three women had suffered at the hands of their husbands or in-laws. But the show’s major infirmity is the absence of counterpoints from their respective husbands/kin-in-law.
Then, there were clips of a sting operation on female foeticide. This, however, did not move Rajasthan’s Chief Minister to take action against the killer medicos. The second episode on May 13 focused on child abuse. Among other things, Aamir Khan’s interaction with children in the episode left one wondering. The children were from the upper middle class stratum where vulnerability to sexual abuse is less when compared to, say, lower socio-economic strata; the plight of street children is pathetic. All advice given by him would have gone over the heads of children from the poorer classes - assuming that they were able to see the show. On the same day at 8 pm, Sony premiered the Kareena Kapoor-Imran Khan-starrer Ekk Main Aur Ekk Tu. Without any warning from the censor bosses or the TV channel, we watched, in a party scene at the film’s beginning, a matronly lady touch Imran’s derriere in the most improper manner, while winking lewdly. Surfing channels, one found Zee TV's reality show, Dance India Dance, featuring child artistes. A five-year-old girl shakes her hips, spreads her arms to do belly dance while shaking something that was absent in the anatomy of a child of her age, and winks suggestively. In reply to the judges’ query, she innocently gives full credit to her mother. To what purpose Aamir's pontifications when the common child is inheriting contrary values from the popular media? He advised the children in his show on what comprised inappropriate touching; that they should report to the adult they trusted if anybody resorted to such indecent behavior. Well, one wonders whether the children participating in Zee TV’s DID, or watching Sony TV’s Kareena-Imran starrer, wouldn’t look upon Aamir as someone who has gone spectacularly off his rocker. The show’s May 20 episode focused on dowry. Aamir interviewed the girls who had suffered brutalities on this count. But there was also the spunky Rani who had exposed her would-be in-laws to the media. Moreover, in Bhivandi, community elders have banned all ostentatious weddings. Women from the North-East asserted that dowry system doesn’t exist there. Interestingly, a Bihari boy narrated how he was abducted and forcibly married to his present wife; sans dowry. Committing crime to fight an illegal tradition?
|
|||
|
|
|||
India has well and truly
entered the ‘Age of Tinsel Values’ wherein form is more important
than content. Glitzier the form, the more voluble the public response,
as demonstrated by our ‘thinking’ people, who hang on to every
word dripping down an actor’s glamorous lips. Genuine social
reformers have been pushed into a corner. Be that as it may, Satyamev
Jayate, "Truth alone triumphs", is today’s reality; a
TV show that brings societal pathos into our drawing rooms while
keeping the reality’s tactile stink at bay.
