Tear-ing us together

When you are not in a particularly happy frame of mind, television is not something you want to watch. It is so joyless it will make you cry even if you were feeling like sunshine. Yes, it’s that bad. You do not expect anything else of the news channels—news is supposed to be bad, sad—but what passes for entertainment is about as cheerful as a dirge.

The Indian audience has redefined the idea of entertainment. You have to wonder at us: the top 30-40 shows do not share a smile between them—unless it’s Mini Mathur’s and Aman Verma’s on Indian Idol (Sony). Even there, judges Sonu Nigam, Anu Malik and Farah Khan hesitate to express their appreciation of worthy performances with anything more than a buttoned-down suppressed movement of the lips. Why even Jassi (Sony), who was always good for a few laughs when she started out, is now weepy and violent in her actions and emotions.

If you watch other serials, you will see characters either fighting or crying when they are not conniving against each other. The only time one of them smiles is when they are contemplating wickedness. It’s the baddies who enjoy themselves, like Komolika. The good gals and guys like Parvati and Om, Tulsi and Mihir, Kashish and Sujal, Dr Simran and Abhi etc are never permitted anything but suffering. Kasauti’s Prerna had a momentary lapse into sexual ecstasy with Mr Bajaj but she had to pay for it with losing her son.

The latest tragic couple to make an appearance is our lives is Kavya and Anjali (Kkavyanjali, Star Plus) and you know this can end only one way—badly—when the subtitle proclaims ‘woh mile thhe bichhadne ke liye’. Within the first two weeks the heroine is dead and the hero dying of love. This dard bhari kahani is enjoying unprecedented success.

The only channel that wants us to be happy is SAB with its round-the-clock sitcoms—old and new. That’s why nobody wants to watch it—or leastways many fewer than those who want to drown in the buckets of tears the female leading ladies have wept over the years. Strange phenomenon: life in India is already pretty depressing, you’d think just the living is enough of a catharsis, we don’t need more misery to purge our woes. But no, it’s the exact opposite: we want to watch people suffer and the more they suffer the more enjoyment we appear to derive. We want characters to be subjected to untold wickedness/misery (and then thank our stars, we’re better off?). In any other country, a comedy like Khichdi or Kareena Kareena would be a top-rated show. Not in India.

What’s wrong with us?