Serial-Watching

It is pretty common to find that people now prefer to be home-bound in the evenings.   Blame it on `serial' watching.  I dont believe this is an isolated scene in one house.  Come evenings, a rather large sub-set of the population in India commences its diligent and untiring vigil in front of TV sets, going through a few hours of `serial' watching.  What seems to be a rather laborious endeavour, involves serially and seriously watching all the serials shown on the TV in the evenings, with short comfort breaks.  The language of the offering might differ and the degree of seriousness with which the proceedings are followed might vary, but one must accept that this `serial' business has managed to keep this chunk of population away from real-life shenanigans as well as other minor/major concerns for those few hours.  From time to time, as an entirely disinterested outsider, one tried to sit through a couple of `episodes' of serials to glean what the learning could be.  Here are some observations, with particular reference to Tamil language serials.


-- The advertised time slot for an episode could be 30 minutes usually, but that does not mean you are going to get great insights into the lives of family members in the serial for the full time.  About 4 minutes of earth-shaking events are followed by 2 minutes of advertisements.  So, you are very fortunate if you get some 15-20 minutes of the tumultuous happenings in one episode.  Some of us are likely to find the advertisements to be more entertaining and relieving, but this is not something I would admit in the presence of expert serial watchers.  Apart from commercial compulsions, one reason for this rationed supply could be that the director probably thinks that no one can take more than 20 minutes of his potent stuff in one sitting.

-- But the masochists that the serial watchers are, they clamour for more of the stuff.  That explains why they are willing to sit through 6 or more serials at one time.  It helps that one serial does not vary much from the next.  Actually, if they remove the titles and merge all the serials into one continuous show, punctuated by the immensely soothing advertisement breaks, no one will be worse off.  This is primarily because about 80% of the serials seem to deal with the same theme of families riven by problems, with similar looking characters and the same bunch of actors.  Unless you are a regular with the intuitive feel for the essence of the serials, it might be impossible to tell one serial from another most of the times.

-- It is sometimes so comical that even a seriously avid watcher is surprised by some occurrence. I have heard the watching-uncle, jolted out of his reverie by the entry of a character, blurting out, `I thought this guy died three episodes earlier and they cremated him; how can he come back phoenix-like'?  The watching-auntie, blessed with enormous experience and superior intellect, gave the usual withering look that erring parties fully deserved and testily clarified that the death and cremation happened in serial ABC, but in this serial XYZ he was alive and kicking; with no intention to fade away before he inflicts the full quota of pain on the viewers, as allotted to him by the director.  At another time, the watching-grandmother, afflicted with occasional memory lapses, was heard to wonder how the relationship between two people in a serial had changed suddenly from maternal uncle and nephew to father and son!!  Watching-grandfather had to gently remind that the lady was confusing two different serials.   This is the result of stereotyping, which has taken its toll and the same actors perform similar roles across serials.  I guess, producers and directors are smelling savings in terms of make-up, rehearsals, production time etc, due to this convenience. Having to innovate can be quite a taxing exercise; why strain what little grey matter we have when captive audiences gobble up whatever is served??

-- Another fixed feature is the predictability of the next scene.  When the daughter of the house elopes with a neighbourhood rowdie (all heroes inevitably emerge from this cluster, as you know), one does not have to be blessed with tremendous foresight to predict what would follow -- the shrill and sorrowless wailing of the mother, the high decibel declamation of the father, who delivers a couple of blows to the wife for not bringing up the daughter well (incidentally, women-beating is a permanent feature of all serials to such an extent that non practising men might feel deficient and unworthy of their status in life), the whimpering of the siblings hiding behind a bored grandmother (she had done the same scene in about thirty serials in the past) and the machete-wielding of the vengeful brothers -- these reactions seldom change.  A good serial is expected to have at least a couple of scheming women (villainy is no longer the male preserve!), who want to sport expressions befitting Marlon Brando in Godfather, but end up going through 30 episodes with the same scowl creased into their faces, not yielding to any other expression that may be warranted by the changing situations.

-- An intermittent or inadvertent watcher of the serial may be excused for the blasphemous comparison of the pace of the serials to a snail's progress.  Even if you watch a serial after 10 weeks, you may find that there has been very little movement in the story and you can fully grasp the goings-on.  A couple of characters have moved a few yards away from their previous position, but most of them are still rooted where they were, still dealing with the same sliver of a problem they were grappling with earlier.  I guess this is how the smart director keeps  occasional watchers also involved in the drama that keeps threatening to unfold.

-- All over South India, the traditional take is that evening (around 6 pm) is a very auspicious time, when  prayers are offered at homes after lighting up lamps. Times were when in a lot of homes, elders did not encourage uttering anything inauspicious during this time.  What are the same elders doing today at that auspicious time??  Sitting in front of TV and watching/hearing copious and non-stop wailing/crying of women in various stages of distress in different family dramas.   And the background music is so gallingly mournful.  This happens every single day, as if serials reserve the choicest of such scenes for this time-slot.  When I diffidently raised the matter with elders at home, all I extracted in response were baleful glares.  And that reminds me - there is precious little comedy in the serials, as if it is banished by design - the direct opposite of what happens in American TV, where sitcoms prevail.  I guess making people cry is far easier!

I probably aired my views once too often.  I even made fun of people when they were not watching TV, asking them to return forthwith since the channel is holding up the serial, after seeing that some people have taken a break!!  I had a vague feeling I would face the consequences.  I did.  One day, my mother walked in to the other TV on which we were watching a cricket test match.  She just glowered at me and said `isn't it the same ball, same bat, same bunkum that you are watching for the past few decades??  So what if the serials look the same.  To me all cricket games look the same too'.  With that, she triumphantly marched out, not even waiting to see the impact that statement had made on the gaping gentlemen in the room!!

What else?? Jana Lokpal Drafting Committee!

A number of controversies have erupted like blisters since Anna Hazare jump-started the near-moribund collective conscience of India's civil society, which has admirably adapted itself to living with humongous  corruption all around.  That number is matched only by the array of corruption cases and scams that continue to surface with alarming frequency across the country.  While the arguments will go on well after the last cow comes home as to the pros and cons of the process adopted by Anna Hazare and Co. as well as the outcome, what intrigues me as a common man is the glibness with which some people have put forth an argument as to why what happened is not good for democracy and democratic institutions.  One representative argument is that by going on fast, Anna Hazare had blackmailed the government into bypassing established democratic processes and having his own choice of individuals on the Drafting Committee (DC).

From where the man-on-the-street is looking,  political parties and politicians had all the time they needed and more, over 40 years to be in the ball-park, to bring about some meaningful legislation to lend teeth to institutions like Lokpal and Lokayukta; but they conveniently did nothing significant to improve the situation in the fight against corruption.  The motive is not far to seek;  status quo suited politicians and bureaucrats very well.  Why would even a half-intelligent politician/bureaucrat want to tighten the noose around his own neck, when the going is so good??  So, collectively, whether it be in the states or centre, precious little has been done to facilitate speedy and effective prosecution of offenders, and to deter others through exemplary punishment for those convicted.  At every turn some hurdle is being erected by people with vested interests, using some excuse or loophole in the laws dealing with cases of corruption.  A good example is the case being handled by the Karnataka Lokayukta.  Despite very impressive and thorough investigative work and proof-gathering, cases involving illegal mining by powerful politicians have been brazenly and systematically pushed back, until the Supreme Court intervened.  The whole idea has been to delay the process by stonewalling, until the next legal or procedural loophole can be identified and exploited to secure some more time to line the pockets further.  And our anti-corruption laws have been rendered so toothless that the offenders flaunt and strut their stuff openly, with outrageous contempt for everything to do with law and democracy.

How does anyone explain the phenomenal increase in the wealth of politicians between two elections??  The numbers are mind-boggling.  One politician in Andhra has declared assets in  2010, showing an increase of about 600% in his wealth in 4 years; and then, it looks like that number does not even account for half of the booty! When numbers declared are like Rs 40,000 crores etc, one wonders how can anyone accumulate such wealth in the span of a few years??  Unless, a big chunk of this has come from money which belongs to the country at large?

In this context, if a senior editor of a respected magazine states that what Anna Hazare and Co. have done is heap ridicule on the democratic institutions in India, the common man wonders whether this editor is off his rocker!!  Dirty politicians and bureaucrats are swindling the country;  same politicians are entrusted with the responsibility of legislating to punish corruption - a classic case of the fence eating the crop; they have not done their job in over 40 years because any change for the better undermines their avaricious ways ; the so-called democratic structures seem to have failed to find a remedy; now a new beginning has been made through another route and you find fault with that?; why would any right-thinking individual object?   It is not as if a legislation is being passed on the street; all that has been done is to ensure that the next edition of the Lokpal bill has appropriate provisions to plug all the holes, which have been deliberately left there to be exploited.  If the government had its way, it would have pushed this burning issue further into the background without any compunction; or it would have, at best, pretended to add a line here and another there to the legislation and left the core of the laws exactly as they are, so that the flag-bearers of democracy in the government continue with their merry ways.  This committee, with 5 people genuinely representing the interests of people at large, can counter all the manipulations of the 5 government sponsored members to ensure that some reasonable improvements are suggested in the draft.  Why is there such a furor from some quarters to this process, as if Anna Hazare is going to promulgate a new law against corruption?  After all, when the draft is ready, it will be discussed in the parliament, right??

I wonder what is being bypassed!  Democratic institutions in the country which were not performing their duties have been given a gentle reminder that they should wake up.  Why are some people shedding crocodile tears now, when all that has been done is to force those institutions to rectify the problem?  Would such individuals stand up and suggest an alternative route?  Or do they want the menace of corruption to continue unchecked until majority of the politicians decide they have had enough of raping the country, its resources, the public, have a change of heart suddenly and decide to pass a new legislation to deal with corruption?
It has been sometime since I heard such sanctimonious humbug from anyone, really!!