Mother of all entertainments

Yesterday I was watching television and instantly came the thought, which show has been the biggest entertainer of Indian television. For answering this question I thought I should go genre by genre and identify the best in each class, and then make comparisons of the winners. So if I look at drama, then certainly the recognition will go to one of Ekta Kapoor production’s series, though I have never seen any of her masterpieces, but have read that Ms.Kapoor has the gift of creating tragedies and have perfected the art of elongating these creations.
I then moved to detective series, my personal favourite . Under this category, there was a tough call between Byomkesh bakshi and CID. While the former was Indian version of Sheralock holmes , solving cases by his brilliance, the latter had ACP Praduman solving every case literally by the swing of his fingers . Against my will I had to sideline with CID as it had been pulling out absurdity for years and hence should be the bigger entertainer .
Then came the third genre to my mind, mythological drama. If religion is opium of masses, then mythological series would be “opium joint”, as it was through these series only you get introduced to religion. The genre had a tough fight too, between Mahabharata and Ramayana, while the former was technically superior and had a more appealing script , thanks to Ved Vyas! But the latter was first of its kind and pioneering, and hence had its own charisma. Here I ruled in favour of my favourite Mahabharata.
While thinking all this, I was also swapping channels. During this surfing I stumbled upon the clear cut winner, to which none of the individual category winners could have competed on standalone basis. The biggest entertainer of Indian television is - Corruption of 2010-11, televised through Indian news channels.
News had always been the biggest entertainer, but presently the entertainment quotient has magnified, probably because for the first time, the recipe of each genre has been mixed into one and hence has produced the biggest episode, the Corruption 2010-11. It has every possible ingredient. If one is interested in emotions, we have Mr. Karunanidhi and one of his wives, publicly crying for their daughter Kanimozhi, who has allegedly been falsely imprisoned. The story is loosely influenced by Godfather, so we have an Italian leading the whole rig through a well established public face. Family emotions along with mafiaso and oppression is indeed a brilliant blend. However there is more. If one looks for excitement, then there exists the question of over 200 crs whose mystery is yet to be solved. There are brilliant investigators engaged in this case, along with multiple teams, led by Mr.Rajdeep Sardesai, Mr. Arnab Goswami Mr. Pravin Chourasiya etc . The whole bunch has repeatedly proven their acumen by raising issues which no one would have ever imagined, could be worth giving second thought.
If one is interested in court room and diplomatic drama, then we have the case of Mr. A Raja and guest appearance of our very own Denny Crane, Mr. Ram Jethmalani, who appears randomly on few television channels, calls everybody else stupid and pledges to support someone till the last drop of his blood. We also have Mr. Kapil Sibal who questions the legality of every issue raised by civil society. He also brings to the table the legal ploys. So signed affidavits to gain advantage in parleys along with few others tactics, were Mr. Sibal’s contributions to the whole entertainment package.
The only angle which was missing from the scene till last few weeks was spirituality, now thanks to Baba Ramdev, we have that too in place. He not only bought spirituality but also action and element of mayhem to the whole episode, thanks to his midnight run away from the shamiana in ramlila maidan and active cooperation from Delhi police . Motto of delhi police is , “in your service always”, they lived their reputation on Baba’s call and added the spice of action to the whole picture.
Since entertainment should not be discriminatory on sexual orientations, hence Baba Ramdev also introduced cross-dressing so that “differently” oriented too have something to look forward too. Thanks to him, now even Rohit Bal will have something to look in entire saga. But in the end how can any entertainment in India be complete without an item number. Feeling left out , this responsibility was taken by Ms. Sushma Swaraj, who gave a stunning performance at Jantar Mantar. Just as is the case with any other scintillating performance, it was mired with controversy. But in the end everybody silenced themselves, after all the act was done “for the team”.
The best thing about this whole package is, it is fast paced, has brilliant actors as actions are mostly live and is covered 24X7! Corruption 2010-11, indeed is the biggest entertainer of all times.