The Bollywoodization of India.

It's been a few months since the UPA government was voted to power once again. It's been more than a few months since Home Minister Chidambaram became a recognizable face as the Home Minister of India, if we can forgive him for merely being the Finance Minister in his earlier position. Around five years in national prominence. By now, you'd think our so called top news channels would have got around to pronouncing his name correctly. BBC and CNN have got his name right, but for some reason, to CNN-IBN, Times Now, and NDTV he is still Chi-daah-mbaram.

It was important enough for us hear from Shah Rukh Khan as soon as he showed up on Indian soil, live, about his experience with US Immigration officials, but we still haven't had any Big Fight on why NCERT history text books do not contain any information on entire kingdoms of South India.

Whether covertly ignored, or overtly sidelined, in a backhanded way, it is perhaps a blessing to be untouched by the incompetent. How many more South Indian names can we have mercilessly mauled on TV? It could get embarrassing.

In a world of massive multiple media penetration, access, symbols, and intermingling loyalties, perception plays an exaggeratedly important role, and the perception of India painted by the expanded reach of Mumbai cinema and its convenient and almost exclusive cohesion with a powerful but myopic “national” media, needs to be carefully monitored.

For a moment, let's ignore the organizations trumpeting their intent to promote “Indian Cinema” without any meaningful representation from four South Indian industries! Let's try to deal with the fact that Mumbai cinema, unwittingly or under the dictates of a big conspiracy, has a corrosive influence on the perception of Indian cinema that needs to be questioned and corrected, clarified and articulated, for the well being of both.

Amongst the various film industries in India, Mumbai rightfully has the numbers to buy some bragging rights for say, Shah Rukh Khan to be hailed as India's biggest movie star, but the rest of India really should say “No Thanks”. This isn't an argument against the market value of the sizzling Khan, but indeed against the rest of truly Indian cinema that is slowly being sidelined or getting swept under the big “Bollywood” rug.

Since Mumbai cinema gets exported more than the rest of Indian cinema, it gets more attention, and it doesn't take much for the convenience store consumerist laziness of the West to swallow the most simplistic understanding of Indian cinema as being essentially contained in “Bollywood”. This word works great to market any Mumbai cinema product abroad, but the best of the rest of India, which usually is qualitatively superior pure cinema, and culturally distinct, doesn't have a chance against this perceptional juggernaut.

If and when Indian cinema reaches a place where it genuinely competes against cinema from all over the world, South Indian cinema would have done its prospects serious harm if we allowed Mumbai cinema to continue its ubiquitous and deliriously incompetent representation of Indian cinema.

There was a time when Amitabh Bachchan brooded his way into the hearts of teeming millions – he was larger than life, could carry dialogue like a king, could be flawed and noble at the same time, and heartbreakingly selfless. It was fun watching his movies with people who couldn't understand a word he was saying, but enjoying the show all the same.

Today's Mumbai cinema no longer appeals to this audience. Mumbai cinema has made the shift from a partially culturally rooted cinema to a bizarre, noisy, colourful, culturally amorphous, constantly dancing animal that has so much momentum it doesn't care whether it appears as a damsel or a monster anymore. It has the numbers where it doesn't have to worry about identity.

This is not to hint Mumbai is suddenly producing universally appealing cinema. Far from that, it is producing cinema that currently appeals to the new breed of upwardly mobile mostly young Indians – global in ambition, citizenship and buying power, fluid and malleable in cultural identity. In other words, they are rich and don't give a sh** where they belong. They want a bit of fun, and can hardly be bothered to tax their intellect or demand something of substance – they seem to be satisfied as long as it gives them something to cheer as “Indian”. They will buy silly, they will buy over the top, they will buy rubbish if it looks glamorous but most importantly there are enough of them around. This number has attracted all the Hollywood studios to Mumbai. Without a cultural foothold, however, they are bound to continue on the path of glitz, occasionally managing to stumble into a story that sticks.

The rest of Indian cinema, however, for most part, really has to care about the identity of each film. The majority of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam and other regional cinema audiences do not live in the fantasy world of stories woven for these global Indians. It isn't uncommon to see the occasional “Nayagan” being remade to “Khalnayak”, but it would be very hard to envisage “Blue” being released as “Neelam” in Tamil.

Mumbai cinema in the world of art, is a strange creature. The vibrant, buzzing city itself is the heartbeat of India's economy and with so much energy and scale, you can almost start believing that the rest of the country is simply Mumbai multiplied. Its film industry is clearly not a stranger to this energy, but it is unfortunately apparent there isn't much else it seems to tap into. The promos sizzle but the films fizzle out. Glitzy mediocrity oozes out of its veins, and it is giddy for more.

Not without choice, but without a clue, a lot of Mumbai cinema has been trying to ape Hollywood cinema for a while, without making any investments in developing true artists. The moment Mumbai cinema allowed itself to be re-christened "Bollywood", it publicly accepted its decay and its defeat, but it had the numbers to run with the branding advantages. By breeding a whole generation of Hollywood wannabes, Mumbai cinema has willingly or unwittingly lost its chance to be true to any cultural anchor, or to be original. (May the exceptions that are few and far between be excused from this generalization – they do not define the rule).

The glee on its actors' faces when they show up at some international film events like Cannes and the Oscars really glosses over how empty they are, even when they don't have a single piece of work worthy of any kind of artistic attention on a global level. But it does highlight how Aishwarya Rai's cleavage has done more for popularising Mumbai cinema abroad than the best of Amitabh Bachchan's work. It should necessarily irk the rest of India if this business of “show” that Mumbai is now notoriously good at, ends up being the umbrella ambassador for a “Kanjeevaram” or a “Dweepa”.

It isn't about whether Indian cinema is being represented – it is whether it is being correctly represented. There is absolutely nothing from a quality standpoint to support Mumbai cinema as an ambassador of Indian cinema. It can't simply be about numbers. Our national bird is the peacock, not the crow.

Notwithstanding the central government's thrust to make India a Hindi country, including BSNL in Erode, Tamilnadu, having a sign encouraging everyone to learn a word in Hindi every day, to the suddenly declared Hindi Diwas that will be celebrated on Sept 14th every year, there are obvious signs everywhere that the Hindi siege is on. What better way to carry out this agenda than by Bollywoodizing India? The devil couldn't have come up with something better than this! Homogeneity would mean a bigger market for Hindi products, less effort needed from Hindi speakers, and indeed, a bigger market for Hindi cinema, more bragging rights for Shah Rukh Khan, (which most of us wouldn't grudge him for), but at what cost?

The number of advertising messages that bombard us with Hindi words written in English letters should get us thinking, but they irritate to say the least. Why would I have to read something in English to understand it in Hindi, if this were not a really slimy way of getting me to learn Hindi sounds? Or are non-South Indian advertising briefs so myopic in their creativity that they think it is cool to mix two languages, one of which a lot of people would never understand? Either situation is below par for intelligence and below the belt in application. It would be a little more bearable if some people actually realized we do not have a culture of saying “Take care” in any language in India and it sounds really awful in Tamil when it comes out sounding like “lock your house” and feels like “protect your belongings”.

Conspiracies apart, and stereotyping forgiven for the moment, what exactly does Mumbai cinema represent? Russel Peters was right when he said Mumbai cinema (he used the B word) is all about looks. Mumbai's leading ladies have a way of presenting themselves very much like their Hollywood counterparts. They can all do their interviews, their glam shows, and their flirting with the public rather well.

But on screen, all of the liberated modern woman is gone. They still have to pout, cavort, be shrill and barbie sexy for the men, but wait a minute! It's no longer OUR men! Heck, they've even lost their curves and most of them don't even look healthy any more! Blindly follow the white man and the crazy notions of beauty that the multinational cosmetic and fashion industries have oversold. God bless them for the money they make, but can we expect an “Arth” shattering performance from any of them? Clearly, they do not represent any cross section of India, but they're influencing the wannabe Fair and Lovely crowd, with misleading messages and marketing muscle. It's not their fault, but without them, this mirage wouldn't exist.

The men? The six pack seems to be in fashion, so everybody seems to be getting one. The Mumbai cinema hero of today is hip and cool, he can run and fly, and dance and flirt and look and walk and talk with style, but for some reason, he can't inspire. The rascal just isn't real enough, and he isn't even rascal enough! Isn't anybody noticing? The metrosexual ant has killed the awesome masculinity of the Hero. Big B didn't need a six pack to be convincing, and his romance was meatier and juicier than anything today's over-managed clowns can pull off.

The story? What story? There isn't one script out of fifty that gets made in Mumbai that has a recognizable head or a tail, leave alone a spine. And people wonder why movies flop? Well, duh! There simply seems to be next to nobody in Mumbai who can take an Indian story and give it the full, evolved, cinematic treatment, which will end up making it a universal story in any case. With more corporate structures coming up, and the inevitable college educated freaks with nothing but rat race life experience taking over story development duties, Mumbai is set to make even more fluffy, cute, chocolate filled rubbish with cosmetic companies in tow. Yet, these are people who won't waste anytime telling the world that “Indian cinema” has its own identity!

Aha! Identity! That is where the rest of Indian cinema, particularly culturally strong cinema like what comes out of Tamilnadu and Kerala, can and must do everything they can to never be seen under the "Bollywood" umbrella. Singeetham Sreenivasa Rao's "Michael Madana Kama Rajan" is brilliant in its own right, in its own space, to its own audiences. The movie is a riot, and no wonder it was a hit. No white man will ever understand head or tail of that movie in the way a South Indian can. And from the same director, we have "Pushpak" which the whole world will always follow and applaud in its own identity.

What identity does Mumbai have in world cinema today that the rest of Indian cinema needs to associate with? Zilch. What cultural identity does Mumbai cinema have in India today that Indian audiences can identify with? Zilch. And that is the bankruptcy that the rest of India does not have to be a part of. The rest of India simply does not have to associate with an animal that has no root or standing, culturally or artistically. They don't even have the same markets!

People who study the market for signs of a new product may argue that being recognized as part of a phenomenon may have some advantages, but this new "phenomenon" is only in whitey's head! The B word may be the buzzword, but again, we have B-wood cleavage to thank for that. (if one may be forgiven for not sufficiently applauding the rare brilliance of a “Lagaan”).

God bless the material wealth, fame, noise, and notoriety that comes with getting international attention, but it is harder to copy the work of a whole team of people making "Monster" than to copy the red carpet swagger of the actress on the awards night and be done with it. After all, we have a whole culture of people who love to watch how good one looks at the finish line. A whole generation of NRIs is still somehow feeling second class, and what better for them than to see one of "their own" on the same stage as the white skinned pixies who are considered so hot? "Look, today we are equal to whitey!".

It isn't as if Mumbai cinema has suddenly found itself mimicking the West. From the black and white era, we have seen umpteen instances in the movie stories where the lead actor plays the piano while men in suits and women in saris and a variety of clothes dance to the tune which thankfully is very much Indian. But the salutations to the white man's culture are there for all to see. It would be a good subject for a research student to get a Ph.D. on - why Mumbai cinema ever needed to ape the west – even when its market was primarily culturally Indian and continues to be! Not that MGR never appeared in a ridiculously western suit in a Tamil film, but regional cinema, particularly South Indian cinema, never sold out on its cultural flavour.

Mumbai isn't making any better cinema today than it was ten years ago, and it doesn't have to, because its market dynamics do not demand that it make anything good in terms of pure cinematic merit. But it knows how to sell itself, and god bless the millions it brings in. But once the romance is over, then what? Isn't it already looking pretty hollow?

Mumbai cinema must take a deep breath and find its own voice – again, and again. It cannot afford to alienate itself from its core audiences in the long term, and it must not try to become the Hollywood of the east. The rest of Indian cinema, however, and particularly South Indian cinema has everything to gain from evolving itself separate from the caricatured and untruthful, very “Bollywood” propagated homogeneity of “Indian cinema” projected by organizations like the IIFA. Indian cinema doesn't need to be Bollywoodized any more than Mumbai cinema needs to be Hollywoodized.

Mumbai cinema can do the rest of India a favour, a big one at that. It can state at every available forum that "Bollywood" is not a representative of any complete image of Indian cinema, it is merely Mumbai cinema. Indian cinema minus Mumbai cinema has several very good identities, and they are all true and real, worth maintaining, no matter how small, as much as any of our languages. If we pride our unity in diversity, we should bloody well make sure we have our diversity intact in order to contribute to that unity.

India, as a culture, as a country, most certainly must resist being Bollywoodized.

* * *

A celebration of Kitsch.

Kitsch - from Sakalakala Vallavan to Quick Gun Murugun (why MuruGUN
instead of MuruGAN?), Indian cinema has slowly but snugly covered
itself in this one description - Kitsch, and seems fairly proud of it.

It is as derogatory as Mumbai cinema calling itself Bollywood and
feeling proud of its failure to rise above third rate glitz, spiced
with fizz, sizzle and a burst of shitz. But it is uniquely Indian.
Post independence India (the only India, really) has found its final
sense of belonging! In Kitsch. Our biggest expressions in the world
of art are still very Kitsch.

We're proud of it because we can afford to be lazy under this umbrella
called Kitsch. It is a warm, fuzzy feeling, when a billion of us can
agree to stay mediocre! Well, shitz, we can even go lower! Thank God
the true artists of this country can still stay out of this mess.
They're not in the news, for the news is also mostly ten pages of page
three, and they're not on TV because TV journalism in India is still
very much about decibels and cheap tricks. No wonder there are so
many shrill women thriving in this media culture and not finding
anything of substance to bring to us.

When Kitsch comes about through a work of art skidding on incongruency
and stumbling over paradoxes, finally landing on the inexplicable that
nobody noticed until that moment, it can be very fun, rewarding and a
nice little dose of low brow. It might even start a new subculture if
the subtleties are handled well, and the perspective is fresh. Then
it has the potential to be substantial, even hope to become art at
some level.

With a starting point marinated in the kind of disconnect Mumbai
cinema is famous for, it can take the best aim at creating Kitsch.
German or not, the word has been adopted by India to define itself.
It's a mess. Whether it is cinema, or signboards, or seats in a bus,
elegance please excuse thyself! This is India.

The stench of urine that hits us as soon as our train enters Chennai
Central, the number of times our cinema viewing experience is marred
by idiots letting their cellphones ring in theatres, the confusing
signs that lead to defunct facilities, the phones that don't work, and
people giving advice when not asked - each of this is our celebration
of Kitsch. Why do we take this attack on our senses so quietly?
Because we have been muted by the enormity of Kitsch around us!

A billion people subscribing to nothing but shit will ensure nothing
but shit gets delivered to us, even if a few of us want to be spared
the landslide. People cannot be inflicted with good taste. But if
there is any way the few of us who want to buy insulation from the
"cattle class", we would gladly do so.

Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs got into a bit
of trouble for saying he would travel "cattle class to show solidarity
with our holy cows". The humour in it actually highlights the
experience of being in India. We are a bloody herd. To have a human
experience, in dignity and quiet, it takes some doing in public spaces
in India.

The paradoxes that Paul Merton might find fascinating about India, and
the inspiration that Baz Luhrman might have got from "Bollywood" for
his film Moulin Rouge are nothing but slices others can tolerate from
us. Our Kitschy behaviour is hardly bearable beyond the early points.
It is beginning to wear real thin. It isn't what we should be
subjecting ourselves to, and it certainly isn't something to be proud
of.

Let's stop the parade that "This is India". The middle class is right
now turning snooty with new found wealth, the power to buy, and
doesn't care. The upper class has long since bought the insulation
they need. The lower class in India is striving hard to come up to
the middle class. but they still don't have the means to rise above
their squalor. When they reach the middle class, they won't care
either. Because they are OUR people!

It may be too much for any of us to question another Indian's "right"
to contribute to the filth in the neighbourhood, to drive like a
lunatic, to spread rumours, to disrespect the law, and to be loud and
despicable in every way. Not all of us have the energy to stand up
against all the ills that we are putting up with. If that were the
case, we wouldn't be such a Kitsch society. But we definitely must
get this notion out of our heads that we cannot really change. We are
cattle, (no doubt about that Shashi Tharoor), but we certainly can
express our disapproval and we can certainly behave better. Maybe in
the sheer numbers we have contributed to the Kitsch, we can begin to
dismantle some of it. Kschitz!

Mumbai, Western India - indeed!

The ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".

Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"

Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?

So, this is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?

It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".

The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.

Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?

Sixty years after independence, we're still very dependent on many things foreign. The most pathetic of them is dependence on foreign thought. What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?

We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.

Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.

Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!

That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.

It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.

It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?

And then, we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!

The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? The number of Indian corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.

Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".

It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, rather dull American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!

The question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)

The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.

There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.

Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape?

Here's some feedback for you Mumbai ladies trying to glam us - You're not turning us on any more. That era of sexiness seems to be over. Most you look like miserable, empty, attitude throwing bimbos who don't know their place in the world. There are a few amongst you we still love for your inherent Indianness (which in itself is incredibly sexy) and beauty that appeals to our sensibilities. But for most part, you skinny bitches just don't cut it. It isn't as if we don't have enough white women to stare at if we wanted that kind of glam.

Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with Mumbai showbiz? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hate being Indian? Just plain clueless? All of the above? Pathetic.

Mumbai Selling

The new ad. for "Khatron Ki Khiladi" on the new channel to come - Colors (notice the missing U?), warns that all the stunts are being performed under expert supervision in South Africa according to applicable regulations (Sounding very much like the Americans who love to write "This is not a toy" on plastic bags), and extends itself, huffing and puffing, to say "Viewers shouldn't try these stunts, especially children".

Now, either that means the stunts are really child's play and even children will want to try them, or our children would really listen to their parents yelling "Pinky! Leave the helicopter alone. You really shouldn't be following Akshay! No Chotu, you can't take the speedboat either!"

Are we hapless masses in India supposed to enjoy something being performed in South Africa with an American idea? How about talking in Polish with Korean subtitles, idiots? Oh, you want this to be a Hindi show? So, why isn't the show's name ever written in Hindi? Could it be because the people who can read Hindi would never watch this show? Or could it be you couldn't really come up with another name for "Fear Factor" that isn't equally dumb?

This is supposed to impress those of us who read in English, hear in Hindi, relate to American culture, and are willing to put up with South African regulations? Why not just show us the original show if we are this international in our taste?

It takes a bevy of beauties to go on some dangerous missions with Akshay Kumar? Fair enough. Television courting titillation is nothing new, but I would rather watch no TV at all than being forced to watch these unathletic acting career dropouts trying to hitch a ride to South Africa under some idea of "cool" invented last night. And these chicks telling us who they are - why? Who cares? To me, they all look the same, sound the same, and act the same. There is a serious business opportunity for a company that can invent and sell new types of giggles. And it can be called "Giggles for Dummies".

The show promises lizards and snakes licking these desirable nubiles - are we supposed to be scared of these creatures? We are still a nation where a large number of people are bitten by snakes on a regular basis, and yet, we do have any mortal fear of the creatures. We even have seven year old girls chasing away leopards with sticks and winning bravery awards from the President. Sweep all this under the carpet while watching another Whitey show ranking snakes for how deadly they are, and you are the perfect candidate to welcome the new White invasion of our culture, this time the mindsets.

Right on the heels of this one, we have BIG BOSS! A bunch of people in a house. So? The ads make this out to be some sort of macabre, extremely menacing proposition and we are supposed to be interested in who survives the rest of the loonybins in the house? Are we supposed to wait in trepidation to see where this next experiment in social engineering will take us? Or will we be spared the end of the season and have some actress cry foul and make news for herself while the show tops every toilet in viewerland?

What kind of Mumbai morons come up with these ideas to copy shows that are boring to start with? What kind of braindead, drugged out dopes are getting paid to come up with these ideas, and what kind of mediocrity marinated lunatic bosses okay these ideas?

We as Indians, have a long tradition of notions, as long as our history itself. These notions are complex and sophisticated, and we have never cared to explain or analyze any of these, because... we don't really care! It takes a lot to dumb us down, and while we might buy into a bit of dumbness once in a while, Mumbai trying to sell us the whole whale is out of the question.

Bottomline - we are not American, and none of the doped out foreign culture sucking assholes in Mumbai, from the uncreative bowels of their below mediocre television culture needs to tell us what we should like and what is cool. We're already cool and we don't really care about that either.

Which one of those dickheads is running Star TV in India? Somebody tell that knucklehead that we don't need to be told what is coming in the "Sizzling Summer" like the Asia Cup and Wimbledon, when it is pouring cats and dogs. Maybe these people are snorting dope all day long and don't even notice that summer is long gone for the 16 percent of the world's population that is keeping one of these sports alive!

That idiot on AXN who's been pronouncing Maruti as "Muhroodee" for ages - can someone other than the RSS tell this fool to get names right(especially those of Hindu Gods!), before letting his voice travel over the airwaves? I really wouldn't mind slitting the throat of the fool who approved this idiot's work, just for the incompetence it shows, or the indifference to Indian viewers who are being subjected to this nonsense.

It isn't as if a foreign culture has never made it to the shores of India. For thousand of years, we have been bombarded by things foreign. But this new phenomenon, of Indians telling other Indians how we must ape others, is new. And it is being fostered in Mumbai, squarely.

It neither begins nor ends with this arbid fiction film world called Bollywood (oh, what a coincidence it has taken to this name with love!). It spreads rather unceremoniously to news channels as well. The 11th of July bombings in Mumbai were shamelessly referred to as the "Seven Eleven" bombings, just so it rhymes with the white man's violent castration of sorts caused on "Nine eleven". When in India did we ever use the month before the day in mentioning a date?

I have heard we have monkeys in Hyderabad, who celebrate Halloween! Halloween, for heavens' sake! What does India have to do with Halloween? One can understand Valentine's day as an opportune moment to woo someone who has already fallen for that one, but Halloween!? I can only say to those who celebrate Halloween in India - to borrow from Mumbai cinema - that they really mustn't have drunk their mother's milk!

The number of advertisements in India, especially for high end clothing, that carry white faces - yet another disgusting low. Why ever should we wear something made here because a white man is ready to wear it? And the number of corporate websites that have pictures of very unproductive but cute looking white faces will give you an idea where India really doesn't want to let go of imperialism, even if we were not the imperialists to start with.

Just so we are not perceived as being racist in our blindness, look at how many avatars Abhishek Bachchan has taken up where he wears clothes like black rappers and moves his hands like he was a tattooed, just released from jail black man expressing himself on the streets of Chicago? I wonder if he would love to get sodomized in an all black jail in the USA, just so he can boast of having "been there, done that".

It isn't as if all copies are incapable of merit and success in our own context. Kaun Banega Crorepati is a much better show than its original, impersonal American version, but it was Big B that made the wonderful warm difference. Indian Idol is indeed a good opportunity for young talent to get picked up to good futures in the entertainment industry although I wonder how many people would recognize Prashant Tamang here than they would in Nepal!

The biggest question to ask is - why doesn't Mumbai copy the best of others' work? The master film makers today, in unabashed open view and in the greatest truth of the marketplace, are mostly white and from Hollywood. India has no Clint Eastwood, no Spielberg, no Terrence Malick, and no Scorsese. Mumbai doesn't have a Leonardo DiCaprio, and we most certainly don't have a Denzel Washington. (India has a Kamal Haasan, but he doesn't work in Mumbai)

The answer is - it's hard work being good. So, if you're not willing to work hard to create something original, and if you have no cultural roots to give you a sense of who you really are, if you are willing to take little crumbs of copied semi-original material and leave it to the marketing machine to make you, then you would do well in Mumbai. But if you are one of these, keep your shit to yourself and don't unleash it on the rest of us who can still tell the difference.

There are many actors and actor wannabes in Mumbai who can swear by the amazing actors Hollywood produces. Great actors come from great material. No screenwriters since the days of Salim-Javed have produced tight screenplays in commercial Mumbai. We will forgive the exceptions like Govind Nihalani for now. There simply is no respect for great writing, and indeed no demand for it. Some of the scripts that get approved for production have absolutely no potential to be "great" in any context, except maybe as recycled paper. All that Mumbai cares about now is "packaging" and as long as that sort of "packaging" has worked in the West, it is happy to ape, rape, and expect us to gape.

Deserving mention are the actress wannabes that show up in Mumbai, dressing and making themselves up like Western women, slimming themselves down, and throwing themselves about just like the women they watch on TV. The same mannerisms, the same attitudes, and the same level of fake confidence. All good, till they come to pronounce "sandvich" or having to understand the interviewer who asks a question longer than five words. Then, in one instance, all the glam falls away, and the villager is exposed. God bless them for their dreams, but what animal are they trying to ape? White western women, of course!

Salma Hayek doesn't hide her native English accent, and no European stars really worry about their identities while having to operate in a foreign language like English. So, what is wrong with us? A really deep inferiority complex? Just hating being Indian? Both? Pathetic.

And what's up with rampantly using the Indian flag and patriotic rubbish to sell products? Do you rascals really have to be that much of a sell out? Mind and body, heart and soul, your creativy is up the pole.