Indian Television: Missing the meaning!

These days two things, that happen on TV, give me real irritation. I would talk about them in detail below.

For the first thing: now a days on several Hindi movie channels several Hindi- dubbed South Indian movies are telecast round the clock. In these movies the protagonist is shown laced with super-powers. They can redeem vows taken in their childhood. They can complete their vengeance even if their every bone is broken. They never die even if they have bled profusely. They never lose; they always win. And not to mention the female leads who are only showpieces with their sultry avatars (as any other general masala movies) sans any meaty scenes.

In the initial stages, when the movie channels started showing Hindi dubbed south Indian movies, I was expecting some meaningful movies from south-Indian movie isles. As a child, I used to watch sometimes south Indian movies (that used to have English subtitles) on Sundays on DD ONE. And I had some wonderful exposure to the art of storytelling and display of subtle human emotions.

Films like  Amrutham Gamaya,Anjali,Nizhalkuthu,Desadanam sketch different hues of South Indian cinema that have tinges of palpable and logical boundaries of human capabilities, frailties, and flaws.

But with the films, that have names like Daringbazz,Meri Taqat Mera Faisla, Rebel Romeo, you miss the essence of pristine expressions of human faces. Now the expression in such southern masala movies is limited to yelling at the villain with high pitch of decibels , crying with faces that can be compared only to caricatures, and laughing with hollow glee that seem utterly cosmetic. You get a feeling watching these kinds of movies that the originality of craft of acting seems to have become extinct.

You might argue that why am I complaining about such films and if I don’t like them, then I should avoid watching such films and If I am fond of other genre of South Indian cinema then there are other platforms where such movies are available.

The reason I am complaining is that the masala movies fail to introduce us the north-east, north, west, and east Indians to the real magic of southern cinema that should be easily available for our consumption. The sensitive and thoughtful cinema is the right of every citizen(of India… of the world, who cares about human emotions. And they should be dubbed in the languages of the other parts of the world to reach the maximum pairs of eyes and maximum throng of brains to introduce them to different hues of the struggles and bliss of human lives.

Yes, the movies are available on the internet, but they are not dubbed in Hindi and they lack English subtitles too. That is why, I am saying that the Hindi dubbing for such south Indian movies should be done that portray human emotions with original expressions.

And as far as dubbing is concerned, why not dub the Marathi, Gujraati , Bangla, Punjabi, and North-east Indian movies and put them on national television channels for consumption of larger audience base. I am sure that the meaningful movies from these languages will fetch more moolah than the meaningless action movies. I bet that when the Marathi movies like Shwas and Nital and Bengali movies like Jana Aranya and Pratidwandi are telecast with Hindi dubbing, they will outdo the profits of no-brainer masala movies.

The second thing: these days whenever TV commercials show happy family, it shows one mummy,one pappa and one or two child(ren). And surprisingly there is no place for Dada,Dadi or Nani, Nana in the TVC for a happy family going on holidays or munching on pizza at multinationals’ outlets.

India is a country where despite the rant of values and respect for elderly, the old age homes have mushroomed all over the country. The media is rife with stories, where children abandoned their parents citing financial burden or after the elderly bequeathed the property to their wards. It is termed as shameful in some quarters of society but the society shuns declaring it criminal. And when advertisement world very cozily conjures up the idea of happy family, it also comfortably leaves grand -parents out of the TVCs. And this should also border on committing an intellectual crime.

I think that the ad world that boasts of brilliant brains and thinkers cannot shun their responsibility of showing the right path to the society and act with gay abandon ignoring the detrimental social trends.

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