script> window.location.href='http://swetamantrii.com/blog/'

A Road Less Travelled

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Real-izing

Faint glimpses of Dekh Bhai Dekh come to my mind - A family that laughs together stays together. That's one of the very first memory that I have of cable television, just after melodramas like Shaanti and the enlightening ones like Surbhi that made their debut on DD. DBD made me believe that if I don't belong to a family that Shekhar Suman did, I'm probably in the wrong family. When Mihir (Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) was dead, it felt as though Jia's (hypothetical) neighbor had lost her husband and when Simran finally ran away with Raj, it felt as though my own love story had come true!

Psychology has proven that what you watch and hear, affects the way you perceive the world to be. In a world where television shows' only motive is to attain high TRPs and producers' only motive is to gain profits after profits, how much of realistic drama (drama that is likely to happen in real life as well) can one expect to watch? And you can't really blame the ones running the industry, just like anybody else, they're there to do their job and to earn their bread and butter! So, do we blame the viewers to have got influenced by what they watch on screen? Ah well, the argument can lead to no where!

There is no denying the fact that the visual medium has affected the way we all think and behave. Every kid wants to be a Dabangg Salman and every girl wants to look like Aishwarya. (The appearance of these two names in one sentence is purely co-incidental).We all grow up watching the Raj- Simran love stories and are made to believe in happy endings. That's exactly where one needs to draw the line. One needs to realize that life ain't a fairy tale with a perfect end. We need to stop making comparisons between Sonam Kapoor's character in a random movie and start getting on with our own lives. Every disabled Meenakshi (Vidya in Guru) will not get a Madhavan who will take her in his arms to complete the saath pheras.

The question is, are we fool enough to get so influenced to not deal with the difference between reel life is real life or are we being fooled? So much so, that we get so carried away to lose faith and start showing suicidal tendencies after one break up. The difference lies in realizing that cinema has perfect endings because it is drafted by sciptwriters, and life by... ah, well!

The Indian Television and Cinema, might have come a long way from being love struck, and what I am touching upon makes up for a very small section of what all goes on in the medium but that does not take the truth away. We need to draw some inspiration from movies like Black and probably some lessons from a Stanley Ka Dabba. We need to realize that life is not a DDLJ and we probably need audiences to accept something like a Dhobi Ghat; because life; most of the times is not about perfect endings but accepting the abruptness and moving on.