reality to the rescue

The spark for this post is an hour and a half spent on thursday night watching tv celebrities gyrating to remixed numbers on star one's new reality-celebrity dance show, Nach Baliye. i absolutely loved it. i loved the fact that i could recognize all the real-life couples, i loved malaika's green sari, i loved the fact that farhan akhtar just repeated what malaika said, i loved saroj khan's acid tongue and most of all i loved the (attempts at) dance. of course, the concept is borrowed but at least its made well which is true of most of the recent shows in its genre.
Interactive reality television has captured the imagination of the common viewer(as well as the critic) and threatens to change the face of indian television. just sample the following facts:
- a 36 year-old housewife in jabalpur ran up a one-month cellphone bill of one and a half lakh sending smses in support of qazi, the young boy from kashmir who had a habit of weeping in every episode of fame gurukul and ultimately won the title. she would start messaging at five in the morning and not stop. i read this as part of a story which talked about how people used qazi as a medium to show their solidarity with kashmiris. they felt it was their duty to make sure he won. he got 48 lakh smses in all.
- the debut album of indian idol winner abhijeet sawant is the highest selling indipop album of the year.
- kbc2 has received almost 90 lakh smses so far.
-the humble house painter from ludhiana, ravinder ravi (whom the judges on indian idol hated and the audience loved) now spends his time between painting and performing in stage shows.
-let me repeat, i could recognize ALL the couples on Nach Baliye.

All in all it means that this has been a great diwali for the producers, the channels, the cellphone operators,the sponsors, the participants and most of all for the viewer. She never had it so good.

P.S: Indian Idol second season starts on nov.21
Nach Baliye on star one ; tue-thu at 9