Take TV more seriously

Yet, had one asked around, one would have found peoples8217; attitudes towards television oddly filled with guilt. I found many people, particularly those who considered themselves progressive, tending to consciously or unconsciously fudge when I asked them how much TV they watched. If they did admit to watching any they were often likely to offer evidence of some educational value in the programmes they had viewed as if the act by itself was a crime and only some effort at self improvement could redeem it.

Is it a hangover from the Nehru era or a bug in our psyche? I don8217;t know but it is intriguing that despite the expansion of channels and the leap in the quality and choice of local programming among the intellectual and, often, the social elite, it is still not considered quite acceptable to watch TV regularly or discuss it openly. A fortnight ago, for instance, I met a couple, parents of a small child, who claimed in fact that they had taken a conscious decision not to own a TV set. The revelation 8212; certainly unusual in the present times 8212; evoked only muted murmurs of protest with the news and Discovery Channel mentioned as reasons to perhaps reconsider.

I confess I find the disdain baffling. For there is so much going on on television these days. I am not talking about high minded stuff like the news and the Discovery Channel 8212; which seems to increasingly be touted as a respectable excuse for watching TV just as people might at one time have claimed to have bought Playboy for the articles! I am not talking about cricket matches and Ekta Kapoor soaps that some love and some hate. I am talking about the stuff in between.

Take the previous week, for instance. At ran- dom: there was Sanjay Leela Bhansali talking to Simi. Hema Malini on Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hain. Another round of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. The Sopranos. Kisme Kitna Hai Dhum.

If you8217;ve heard the Devdas director talk about his spats with his heroines/producers and his magnum opus ad nauseum, then here was a chance to know the person. To hear what it was like for him to grow up with a broken, alcoholic father and about finding moments of joy in a chawl room thanks to a remarkably spirited mother. The previous week one could have watched Maneka Gandhi describe the trauma of being a young widow and talk with childlike glee about an intoxicated donkey in her backyard.

On Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hain, there was the opportunity to witness the happy end to a romance that had caused public scandal twenty years ago: a misty-eyed Hema, with two grown up daughters in tow, watching Dharmendra talk about his love for her. On Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Parveen Sultana 8212; who was one of the judges 8212; broke into an unexpected heartfelt appeal to ask singers from her long troubled home state of Assam to participate in television programmes. On the Sopranos, one entered without judgment into the tortured and complex mind of a man who kills for a living while pure zest poured out of Kisme Kitna Hain Dhum, as boys and girls slugged it out with elan in the weekly songfest.

These are not events that will hit the headlines or cause the downfall of nations. They may be nothing more than moments. Yet, they are moments that matter because they record our emotional development as a nation. Of how we have grown, how free we are to express ourselves or not, of what makes us happy or sad, and what are the motivations that drive us and people like us elsewhere to do the things people do. This is what television does best. And the fact is Indian television is coming into its own. From being a step-body to the press and a parasite to Bollywood, Indian television is slowly but surely finding its feet. Perhaps it is time we start taking it seriously.