Bigg Boss house is the closest we can get to exploring real Indian sanskar and conduct
A secluded beach house echoing with the moans of select loud-mouths, vulgar display of sadism and scantily clad mannerisms may not be the ideal vacation spot — but all this is certainly a hit when played out on prime time television.
Salman Khan is back on television with the 12th season of Bigg Boss. And, right from the word go, the show has started generating controversies, as intended. The point of discussion is not what controversies have already hit the gossip-sphere, but how soon and how much uglier, nastier and sinister can it get.
Day one has already seen a devotional singer, Anoop Jalota, and his girlfriend getting trolled, for their 'vichitra jodi'. According to Indian culture, a young woman dating an older guy, and that too a bhajan singer, is obviously vichitra (bizarre). What is acceptable though is the prejudice, the distasteful jokes about the couple. Why? Because this is how intellectually and emotionally evolved we are.
If you thought Bigg Boss is just an annual ritual where out-of-work celebs seek easy fame and money by over-washing their dirty linen in public, you are mistaken. Although the reality game show format is copied, the theme is very Indian — dirty display of cheap tactics and getting away with everything that's wrong in a civilised world. But then, when was India known for its civility? Lofty talk about civilisation with a forehead smeared with a tilak doesn't make us sanskari.
Bigg Boss, unlike its critics who dismiss it as a misogynistic entertainment show, is actually the most accurate depiction of Indian society — a group of privileged and not-so- privileged people, celebrating a carnival of masochism, homophobia, the objectification of women and the commodification of human emotions — all in the name of 'entertainment'. Actually, it is wrong to say that Bigg Boss is scripted, this is Indians at their creative best, their organic best — screaming at each other, throwing pee, err, muck, at each other, drowning each other in a sea of filth and bile.
What hit the small screen 12 years ago as a variant of Celebrity Big Brother, is actually the most original Indian show, the lubricant that we need to keep the hate machine inside us running smoothly.
In an era when even a harmless 'Hello friends, chai peelo' is enough to make one a celebrity on social media with millions of views, Bigg Boss participants have the toughest job right now in the country — to leave their mark with unmatched hatred, because Twitter users have already mastered that art.
Winners of the show over the years have as quickly disappeared from public memory as they fought their way into it. So, the fight for survival is naturally getting nastier.
Despite the predictability of the game show and its format, its viewership has only increased over the years.
Reality television may not be real but Bigg Boss is for real and all that happens inside the house shows a very real India.
Neither the situations, nor the protagonists are imagined, these are all very true incidents and emotions playing out in front of us every day — the exhibitionist in us consciously exposing our bigotry and prejudice. Indians no longer believe in hiding anything. On the contrary, we flaunt our entitlement and our ugly inhuman side like Olympic Gold medals, which unfortunately we never had the thirst to win much.
Reality television is not new either. But Indians look forward to Bigg Boss every year with hopes of hitting a new low in human behaviour.
What takes the cake though is its host and the weekly chastising he does. Just like in a kingdom of wisdom, the king has to be the wisest — the same goes for Bigg Boss and its kingdom of pretension and prejudice.