Breeding Lucidity: May 2010

So my neighbour and sistah Rimi gets a telly connection! Oh yeah! I personally was uber excited at the prospect until I learnt that she would only receive the Hindi channels for a while. Well, don’t get me wrong, am no Hindi-hater but the whole prospect of Bugs Bunny going “Arey, upar kya hain Duccter” was heart wrenching. But oh well, I got over it pretty quick when I saw that CID Classics was on Sony. So there we were, reminiscing our good old encounters with the television – CID’s ACP Pradyumn was my second tryst with detective serials (which are now my favourites on telly). The first was Tehkikat on DD-2. So there was Daya who always broke down doors and Frederick who was a little slow! We were having a ball checking out how catty the show had gotten, two new female detectives fighting to get credit for clue discoveries when the rest of the crew was busy solving the mystery of Gayabi the Magician – how he disappeared in a, well, disappearing act and managed to get a dead body to replace him. For once, we did not crib about the lack of creativity when it came to the name of the magician (gayabi means the one who disappears) since we had watched Avatar and its ingenuity with names (unobtainium – DUH!). If James Cameron can be forgiven for this and nominated for Oscars, heck, our Fireworks Productions can be even applauded for Mr Gayabi’s nomenclature! So there, we were shown that a neon light could actually scan a body and the computer was able to highlight the slightest flesh wounds in bright red colour. Also that when the killer has actually left his fingerprints on a glass, no one bothered to check for it even though there was the Forensic department with the flashy neon light. Anyhow, we finally discovered that there were multiple killers and that Mr Gayabi was a master hypnotist who could make you sleep by the sleight movement of his hand. The only way the CID could catch him was by covering his eyes. The closing dialogue by CID Abhijeet was “tu ab tak sabhi ko sula raha tha eh? Ab main tujhe sulaoonga” (you’ve been putting people to sleep right? Now I will put you to sleep). We thought it was part of the story until we realised that Sony had really decided to keep a flow going for the programmes. Next up! Indian Idol *snore*! Hussain and previous winner Abhijeet Sawant take the stage. The former is a good presenter and handsome too. So let’s just say that we’d wake up here and there to catch a glimpse. But Sawant’s presentation skills never took off, just like his music career. He must have sung the song ‘Junoon’ but I guess the teleprompter cannot really pass that on to you! Anyhow, we dreaded having to sit through the serial since there was nothing else to watch. We shall go character by character here. (Kindly note that this was when the idea of The Belan Sistahs was formed. Most middle-aged ladies watch these telly serials when they are cooking. Belan is the rolling pin. Sadly, we reminded ourselves of them during this ordeal.)

Anu Malik: To paraphrase Shelley, “If Sidhu is here, can Anu Malik be far behind?” I know I know, Shelley just turned in his grave. And yes yes, Sidhu cannot be winter (since I was born in December and I shall not willingly defame myself) and Anu Malik as spring? I think the world just collectively screamed ARGH at the very thought of that! The dude just does not know that rhyming everything is passé and most importantly annoying! But since that seems to be the only way he can get his messages across, I hope he understands them too for “Mr Malik, you may think you are clever when you spout out those rhymes, but we all rather have you be impressed with mimes!”

Sunidhi Chauhan: Hmm, this is the first episode. So shall reserve comments on her. For one, she does not say “mind blowing”, “you’ve the X factor” or “fantastic” after each performance. Kudos to her for having a bigger wordrobe than Ms Farah Khan.

Saleem: Watched this guy for the first time. Hmm, he tells everyone that it was an awesome performance – talk about constructive comments. Oh well, at least he doesn’t try to rhyme when he is bring redundant. Tip for him for the next time – record your comments..oh wait, comment! Singular!

The rest of the judges for the night were the cast of the movie Housefull (Lara Dutta, Ritesh Deshmukh and Sajid Khan). They were a decent lot. But have to mention a joke by Sajid Khan – yeah, we are being extremely generous when we call it a joke. The incident shall be elaborated on later.

Now on to the contestants. A disclaimer here. One of The Belan Sistahs cannot sing to save her life. No, we are not going to ask you to SMS your guesses in! That’s a contest I don’t want to win!

First up was Mr Yashraj who owes everything to his folks! And everyone go Awww. It was so touching. The Belan Sistahs could feel tears rolling down their cheeks. Oh wait, that was the imaginary onions! Anyhow, a little bit of googling revealed that this guy had already won Rs 1 million on another reality show and a record deal to go with it! Hmm. First question, when did we start counting rupees in millions? On Indian Idol (a spin-off of the American Idol) we could probably understand but on “Choona hain aasman” (want to touch the skies)? The Belan Sistahs are not particularly happy with the Americanisation – what’s wrong with lakhs and crores? Last we checked, it was still “Kaun Banega Crorepati”! Even Big B agrees! Second question, is it justified - selecting him in this competition? It is almost like IITians getting into IIMs! (No offense, kindly note the strategically placed ‘almost’ in the sentence) Must say that he sang well. We silently hoped that worse would come along since our plans of using our belans seemed to be going down the drain.

Then there was Bhumi Trivedi. This is where The Belan Sistahs were split. The one between us who cannot sing did not like her song whereas the other found it to be good. She was praised for the Gujju rap she pulled off at the end but overall, it wasn't very eventful.

Then walked in Shashi. The omnipotent Google informs us that he was a contestant on another reality show. Now we really cried – the kid’s got a second chance! Yes, we believe! The guy left his home with Rs 1000 (equivalently a grand – for you pseudo Americans!) in his pocket to make a career in music. He returns home 2 years later and must say that he learnt a lot in the past two years. He sang extremely well. When everything was going so well, Sony decides to exercise the tear glands of all our fellow Belan Sistahs across the world. The dad is in the crowd. He starts to cry. Anu Malik points this out. Mr Shashi cries. Sunidhi cries. Or at least shows off her bright blue manicured nails by wiping off her tears(?). But we did not lose hope since three of our embedded Belan Sistah reporters were shown to be unmoved and quite frankly bored at the whole Bollywood melodrama playing out there. Mr Shashi walks into the crowd, hugs his father and exclaims “I love you Dad”. The Belan Sistahs love their dads but “I love you Dad” display by a lower middle class family in India – doctored! After all this happened, Sajid Khan decided to remind us that he was a comedian and it was his responsibility to lighten the mood. There’s a raging debate on regarding the status of the following statements. “Arey, yeh mat bolo ki tumne sapna ke liye ghar chhoda. Sapna ke maa-baap ko bura lagega. Bolo khwaab ke liye” (Do not say that you left your house for Sapna (Sapna – a Hindi word for ‘dream’; alternatively can be a girl’s name too), use the word “khwaab” (another word for dream) instead). I guess we have a unanimous verdict regarding its status here – non-joke! To end Mr Shashi’s bit on a positive note – he did sing amazingly well!

For the next one, The Belan Sistahs shall be bringing out their feminist fangs! The next contestant is 19 yr old Arpita from Kolkata. She is not the typical Indian Idol contestant. Why oh why? She is not fair skinned and she is not thin. The entire bit on her before she came on to the stage was about how she had the biggest soft toy collection ever. Fair enough. Some like pink, some like toys. Next we hear the narrator and later on Hussain introduce her as the “rolly polly choti”! The Belan Sistahs cringed! We did throw our imaginary belans at the screen! What ze heck? It is never ‘cute’ to make a veiled reference to her size on national television. Would you call Lindsay Lohan the ‘sticky skinny blonde”? Oh wait, she scores a point by being fair skinned there! Darn you all. So we were rooting for her when she broke out singing! Amazingly powerful voice and wonderful singing. The imaginary balens made a return when the judges decided to continue their ridiculous rolly polly induced rant after she was done. But screw them all we said. Go Arpita!

Arpita was followed by Kanika. This lady also had a difficult past and was determined to do everything to make her parents proud. Everyone in the house go Awww." Awwww". Must say that she sang pretty well but she was overshadowed by the contestants who had sung before her. Not going to be easy for her, we tell ya!

Next came in Vishwas. And by this time, The Belan Sistahs were hungry. Dinner time was fast approaching and we got distracted. But recap showed that he sang very well.

We had our own Bengaloorian come in next. Asit. Uber confident dude who, at home, was shown to sing with his HP laptop proudly perched up on his lap. Our guess is that his vocal chords are linked to his HP laptop in some way since he gave a dismal performance tonight without his trusted friend. Computer is indeed personal again!

Finally, Swaroop from Rajasthan makes an appearance. His story says that he grew up just listening to and singing folk music. Our embedded reporters haven’t been able to check the veracity of that statement, but rest assured they will! Till then, assuming he is telling the truth, we admit that he sang the movie song very well. Then he did another folksy number and voila, he was the next poster boy for Sony! Hussain had the nerve to tell him “You are different from the rest” in a way that almost shouted out that he was weird and the rest were normal. Imaginary belans – aim, fire!

You can clearly see that The Belan Sistahs have run out of steam here. Each paragraph is shorter than the one above. But for our grand finale, we present to you two awards. We have The Belan Awards.

The Belan Moment

There is The Belan Moment. This is for that moment when majority among The Belan Sistahs felt like throwing their imaginary belans at their telly screens. Given that it is our first episode, we decided to be generous. It is a tie between Sajid Khan’s “joke” and Hussain’s question to every contestant “Do you think you’re the next Indian Idol”? If questions can be redundant, we figured we could make the award redundant too! Ha!

Ze Best Moment

The next award (well, we haven’t been able to come up with a fancy name for it yet) is for the best (really!) moment. This award is for the moment when all The Belan Sistahs decided to roll out their best dishes to the contestant. In this episode, we give it to Ms Arpita breaking into her song – after all the veiled insults, it was a treat to watch her perform so well and to be honest, The Belan Sistahs were pleasantly surprised.

It has been a longish post and since The Belan Sistahs haven’t got their administrative duties structured yet, there shall be no editing. You are requested to kindly bear with us and ignore all the errors that have crept in. So until next time, as The Belan Sistahs would say, Keep on Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’! (Yes, Limp Bizkit stole it from us!)