| Since Hindi serials don't make much sense anyway, it's natural to shift to watching films and tune in to Friends occasionally. I've watched Sarkar for the fourth time, seen Salaam Namaste and Bunty Aur Babli twice already (not counting the number of times the cable wallah has shown it), Hum Tum, Bluffmaster and Pyaar Mein Twist (easily one of my favourites). |
| Of course, there's the atrocious Neal 'n Nikki that's threatening to come on the telly. Then there are the still-very-fresh classics like Chupke Chupke, Golmaal, Padosan, Angoor and Chashme Budoor that can still make you chuckle and grin. |
| Of course, it's often more intriguing to watch a film after speaking to the filmmakers who inform you that some producers and filmmakers will go to any length to sell their film way after its release. |
| Fudging collection figures and exaggerating them to a large extent, the film world is quite a madhouse. "Filmmakers post dubious figures as profits," director Kunal Kohli told me when we were working on the Weekend cover story in today's paper. |
| Ah, enough cover story hangover. Let's get back to what's on telly. For one, |
| I saw an excellent and effective story on BBC focusing on the life of Lebanese citizens in refugee camps. At one point it focuses on a tussle between two ladies who differed in their views on the war. |
| The story was a hard-hitting reality on the desperation, insecurity and the sheer helplessness of these two ladies as they groped through the day like thousands of others stuck in a similar situation. |
| The story clicked because it looked beyond the politics and the war. It looked at the bitter truth of simple families who were stuck in camps for no fault of theirs. |
| If war coverage is depressing (even if it is informative), Indian reality TV can rear its ugly side too. Two sisters recently attempted suicide after failing to get selected on Zee's Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa. Sadly, they're not the first ones to go down this path. |
| Najai Turpin, a contestant on the US reality show The Contender, shot himself three weeks before the series was due to be screened. An entertainment site, www.tastyworm.com, that |
| I recently came across, mentions other grim examples of individuals who've gone down this unhappy route. |
| Thankfully, there's another side to reality too, and I need hardly expand on the coverage on Prince, the five-year-old boy who stayed unrescued inside a 60 ft deep pit for 50 hours. A |
| CCTV set was lowered into the pit along with chocolates, food items and milk for the poor lad. I remember shifting uneasily while watching the kid on numerous news channels, and saying a silent thank you prayer when he was pulled out eventually. |
| Telly and its many shades of reality! |
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