Reality Shows in India

The first ever music reality show was- Popstars. And the nation was hooked on to the fortunes of Viva, long before Abhijeet Sawant of Mumbai or Silchar Assam ke Debojit and Sanjaya Malakar of Mohawk hair fame! But I recalled due to age limit that there was a dance show named Boggie Woggie. It was the first dance show that changed the idiot box viewers interaction. It was the first popular show across India that made the participation of an average Indian possible. Even S. Sreesanth danced to its tune in his childhood days.

Apart from the past, the airing program reminded me of unlimited potential spread across our land. India is beautiful nation and full of colors in each aspect of life. Brilliant Performance by children shows the changing attitude of previous generation towards dance, songs and cultural values. Ethics are changing with time (Degrading according to previous generation).

A new type of show is spreading across cable channels: Reality Show for talent hunting.

Until now, so called 'reality shows' have really been talent shows. Indian Idol, Fame Gurukul, Sa re ga ma,Great Indian Laughter Challenge - all of them promise to make a star out of an unknown quantity.On one hand rich cultural heritage and diversity are expressed to us by competition and on other 'Make a name of yourself fast & big philosophy' is in full flow in masses. Mainly dance, songs, comedy or mimicry is limited to bollywood. Folk culture is dying in fast rush of population for city culture or consumer culture. Leave alone the Drama, Tantrum and TRP ratings. For nonjudicial and biased decision of reality shows, read this brilliant article:

From youthcurry blog, one line thrashers for this trash shows:

Rock n Roll Family: They flirt shamelessly with the judges, and debate on saali being aadhi or poori gharwali. All scripted for sure but there is no sharam or lihaaj in either the banter or the matkas and jhatkas.

Big Boss: It may be trivial, perfectly "yeww" in parts. But even discussing how much you supposedly hate it... is fodder for canteen conversation.

MTV Roadies:The irony of each rounds is that if you ask a junior to do this kind of thing in college, it's called 'ragging' and you could go to jail.

Splitsvilla: The I & B ministry recently issued a notice to MTV for 'denigrating women' .
In my(yayaver) opinion 15 girls to seduce 2 boys is really cat fight not to miss by each boy/guy at home alone.Truly,all of them are one more step ahead for voyeurism,vulgar language and dirty politics on idiot box.And all things are done in the name of reality.

My opinion: We are feeding upcoming generation with "reality TV" obsessed culture. The way the real-life viewers ignore the real lives of their compatriots and customers while focusing on a false life on screen; whose life is more real and whose is worth living? Instead, the insight aspect of the reality show has been catapulted by a society that would more readily watch "reality" than live it.Notable watch for understanding and future of reality showbiz: The Truman Show in this genre.

Message for die hard reality shows fan: The audience that watched the reality show is a self-indulgent audience of consumers who wanted to be entertained no matter what the cost to characters, reminded me of the soaps opera & Paparazzi, of how we like to know about the celebrities, and ultimately of how the product could be the death of someone such as Princess Diana.

Rashmi Bansal quotes in her post about sad state of affairs---
"The whole idea of the new generation of 'reality' shows is to create an 'emotional infection'. While the characters in a soap opera act and evoke emotions, reality shows set up a showdown of some kind which induce emotions, spontaneously. The ultimate irony, isn't it? 'Reality shows' and their contestants are becoming more real and newsworthy for viewers ... than reality itself."

Bottomline: Life is not fair - that is reality. Neither are reality shows which are actually not real at all...

American Desi

American Consular Officer: "How do we know you'll come back to India?"
Student: "Sir, my roots are here - my family, my property, my business... I want to study in America, but I will come back and put my education to good use."

I read this conversation from someone'sblog and idea about state of indians living abroad struck me. Thousands of Indian students have given this earnest answer at their visa interview. A significant number never return to their motherland. You have to wonder - why bother to ask? Because the idea of America, to a large extent, is to attract the brightest and the best from around the world. NRI ideally stands for Non Resedential Indians. Practically NRI means- Non Returning Indian or Non Reliable Indian.

When the race for food, clothing and shelter becomes over, then green card migrants try to find a identity for themselves. Next generation faces issues like choosing their sides between Indian family and American culture. Desi Indians may perceive herself as 'American' but the colour of her skin and country of birth still make her/him a 'foreigner who's done well' as far as (a section of) right-wing America is concerned. It is about finding identity in a country that will treat you as alien if you are born there. They become like pendulum bob swinging between Indian family and American social surroundings.

Desi is all about rediscovering your roots. Generally, Desi is turned usually associated with Indians living abroad. Now, a new term is framed for the generation born there: ABCD .

ABCD: American Born Confused Desi ;American Desi is used in short for them. The movie 'American Desi' was really upper view of lifestyle and relation of Desi youths. For cool pass time watch it with open mind and heart....

The Namesake as a novel and movie is one of the original and first attempt to address this issue from American perspective. The settling of a family in alien land for the search of livelihood. Their gradual acceptance of the new land. A bemused incomprehension of their extended family to appreciate their better (different?) way of life. Clinging on to certain customs while leaving others. The alienation of the second generation from the first. The second generation's assimilation into a more modern way of life. Halted communication of the first generation to the second. Three hardly identifiable characters mostly lost in a distant land from their own makes Namesake a passable attempt at winning western audience. And i will not spoil the plot here.

Lets put our attempt to understand about Indians living abroad. We were not much aware of America before 90's as brown skinned natives who didn't elect George Bush and live 3000 miles from Graceland. With the globalization era, the periphery of an average Indian with outside world has increased dramatically. The journey starts with Bollywood.

“Watan se chitthi aayi hain” (sung on screen by Pankaj Udhas) was NRI anthem from film 'Naam' but the movie was mainly targeted to middle east based Indians. Forget Purab aur Pachim, now bollywood can make film like Salaam Namaste, Kal ho na ho, Namaste London, Kabhi khushi kabhi gum and Dostana (list cont...) . But movies like 'Provoked' gives also other face of the reality. They are entirely based on NRI life with fictional Indian value embodiment in them. Now,an overseas market are targeted with Desi junta as potential consumers. Swades was genuine Indian attempt to pull the strings of NRI to their motherland. Sivaji was also on footstep of swades but on a much broad fictional stance. Some are worth mentioning here as they have done Real Life Swades.

Worthy to mention Punjabi NRI who's mixed bhangra rhythms with hip-hop and reggae to create new genres of music altogether. I am mere observer here. Its flight of elites and plight of masses in mine motherland India.

Death of Parallel Cinema

There are now two decades over after the demise of parallel cinema.Literature and Theater are the main sources of parallel cinema in India.The turbulent situation of the 1970's gave birth to the ‘parallel cinema’ movement in India.With the open market policy in film industry and decay in government funding,this movement dies out slowly after economic liberation.Indian Cinema is thriving today thanks to an audience who is hungry for films, however, our works have degraded over the years, and regional cinema and few great filmmakers are marginalized to the film festival or art house circuits.

Regional films constitute of high percentage in parallel cinema. The regional cinema, obviously in majority formed the alternate cinema. Ever since the decline of regional cinema throughout the nation, and the dying out of the parallel movement, the viewers have been feed with repeated image, sound and music.Most of us had used to watch regional films on DD on Sundays. With the advent of cable and dish culture, the regional cinema has suffered huge setback. There is no information either in the print or electronic media about alternate films.Dish Channels do not show off alternate movies even in non prime time.

Today, the films of ' New Wave' are hard to find, and the aesthetics of these filmmakers were never carried forward, meaning, the tradition not only got lost, but never translated or taken further- explored in new avenues. Not only that, the lack of availability of the films of ‘New Wave’ in the market is another important factor which slowly spelled death for the filmmakers and their films. It’s sad, because, even when one wants to rescue these films most negatives are either lost or destroyed or its in hands of people who are not willing to part away with them for reasons unknown.

For,deep view in the subject:

-To each his cinema.
-Wikipedia Link about Parallel Cinema.
-Indian New Wave- a potrait.
-Old vs New Parallel Cinema.
-Parallel or New Cinema in India.
-The demise of parallel cinema.
-Demise Of A Different Kind.
-Parallel Cinema not getting visibility at global festivals.

While other directors other mainstream directors usually try to be time consumer and economical by saving on cuts and indulging into unnecessary zooms and moves of the camera, it feels positive that there existed what we call Indian Parallel cinema, wherein the directors were at least trying to find their style with a sense of aesthetics .

As Andrei Tarkovsky once said, "Cinema can never be a true art form till it’s confined by the constraints of money."

Training & Placement Cell, IT-BHU

After long time a great change has came taken place in TPO website of ITBHU.
http://www.itbhu.ac.in/tpo/index.html
This is really cool stuff from administration after long time of hibernation.

Saga of Mechanical Engineer from ITBHU

As stated before, I was great fan of opening scene of RHTDM. A firing dialogue was delivered - “Mechanical Engineer mein fire hone chahiye”. Then in next scene of the movie, R. Madhavan ignites a lighter for smoking cigarette. That snap makes mechanical engineering as a coolest and macho field of engineering. Mechanical department is more cussed fore lesser grades and strict professors than any other department irrespective of engineering college.

Really handy research predicts the stronger aptitude – between verbal and numerical – in children by the relative lengths of their fingers. Now, how cool is that? Apparently, if your index finger is shorter than your ring finger, then your numerical aptitude is expected to be stronger. And if the index is longer, then your verbal ability is stronger. Of course, my longer index finger explains – in hindsight – why I scraped through four years of Mechanical Engineering. And do not miss the use of middle finger used for sign language....

I walked into the massive building for the first time while a long guided tour of Department of Mechanical Engineering was given to us. It was a really long procession – as there were almost all 60 of us although Roll no. 42,'Sagar Singh' was missing.

Academically, it was probably the best decision of my life to study Engineering and I realized that after studying(just enjoying) 1st week in college. This decision also looks back firing when in the first thirty minutes of the first Engineering Drawing class. R S Singh and his company makes life more difficult than ED (Engineering Drawing). R S Singh is a good teacher, it was just that I was lacking imagination for 'plan' and 'elevation' with possessing scary drawing skill. One class was just not over when few of us were literally scolded for being 1 minute lab at Engineering mechanics lab.

The curriculum in the third semester in department, at its best, has the same level of complexity as the mandatory seat-belt instruction 'training' prior to takeoff. Every day we fled the department faster than a fire-alarm would evacuate Pentagon. We went to many more places than the first generation Aryans went to find newer pastures in gangetic planes. The lanes of BHU were well covered by our cycle trips and never to forget the nostalgia of Cafeteria in 15 minute break. However mass evacuation of mech students at 10:15 due to arrival of G-9 is also a scene to remember forever. However, the clear winner was an ambiguously named place called "Limbdi Corner". I know it is named after limbdi hostel but who the hell is limbdi? It was neither air-conditioned, nor really hygienic. But the taste of Samosa and Khasta is unforgettable.

When other departments finished the only mandatory "fitting" lab - where one has to build a T-joint with cheap wood pieces, we still had 13 more left where temperatures of burning metals could often exceed 500 degrees. And people call our sufferings at workshops as true and evergreen engineering. Only other 'labs' from rest of the departments had either chemicals or computers with as 128MB RAM. The main mechanical lab had, and still do, a Wesson lathe machines - always reverently garlanded on the day of "Viswakarma Puja". Try that with your jar of Sulphuric Acid, Chemical!

For those who came to ITBHU after 12 years of "boys only" schools, counting - or other related number crunching - would only involve girls. At least on that very first day, we had only one dream about gender ratio. But it was thrashed due to grass root realities of IIT JEE system. Mechanical Engineering was the hotbed (pun not intended) of activity, being the home base of a few thousand technically inclined, hormonally charged, muscular people. Most of them were totally unable to comprehend how girls fell for wimps who recited Pablo Neruda and had no time for macho men who thought nothing of hammering a cast iron flange for three hours straight. As I write these lines, I get a feeling that people must be wondering if Mechanical Engineers are a modern version of Spartans.

Before anybody tries to protest at what seems like an exaggeration, let me add that we never let anybody finish a match we had the remotest chance of losing. The constant boycott on losing the match was sight to watch again and again in memory lanes. So, every single Arena followed a predictable path for Mechanical. For these modern-day Spartans to flex their sporting muscles, there was an aptly named tournament called CS and AOE Arena.

For Chemical, it was time to show off that they had the maximum girls in the department. For Ceramic, it was time to show off that they had really good dancers. For Meta, it was time to show their bench strength in theater performance. And for Mechanical, it was a time to pulverize the rest of the Engineering faculty into dust, swallow them with a gulp of Thumbs Up and pee it out in the center of the pitch. We had shown it countless in time in cricket or CS and AOE match. The random and chaotic dance of our seniors at cult fest KY-07 was such memorable event. Also, KU & Technex were managed by our passionate batchmates despite of consistent sarkaari type hindrances from the administrative system.

We have done cuss word fights several times in CS match against final year Cera Branch (2006). Lot of words were exchanged between us but they never bothered us with their super senior attitude. 3rd Electrical Branch(2007) do not have courage to stand our outrage. The fight was much a scene and video recording by JD of pre-arguments before dispute between us and them was sensational. It was shared on LAN with more input of Student Language than English or Hindi. Even it was test of VKS next day, our batch of Mechanical Engineering attacked the Electrical Engineering Department with stumps over a small case of mess in hostel only. That day, even Warden watched from the sidelines!)

Socially, it was probably the best because in those four years. I had the privilege of knowing most intelligent and entertaining people. Even though it is a engineering college, there are bond guys in field of academics, music, sports, theater & technology. I was lucky to be part of such geniuses as college mates. This lengthy tour de force cannot end without paying tribute to Photocopy machine at which we have spent more time than Guttenberg has done at his inventory printing press.

However, graduating in Mechanical Engineering was like being perpetually in a place that's a homogeneous mix of a crowded men's locker room and a sports bar that does not allow females. Hell, we did not even have a "Ladies" toilet in the buildings that our department owned in our first year. I read the below lines in some one's blog about Mechanical Department,ITBHU-- "If You have passed your 4-5 years course here at IT-BHU,then you can survive yourself in any condition of your life". I am not saying these words but students of this department say together.........."