Shilpa goes to London

I am often asked which formats of British television one could profitably translate into cheap Indian product. Kaun Banega Crorepati was making big waves in this narrow, venal and imitative arena when the question was first posed.

 

There was, at the time, a popular programme on UK TV called Blind Date. It was a sort of competition to put men and women together, send them to holiday destinations, and watch the result. A young, well-groomed man would sit on one side of a screen and three girls who hoped to be his blind date would sit on the other. They would ask him prepared questions and get coy answers.

 

“I am a dentist, are you afraid of me?” “No, drill my cavity any time!”

 

You get the idea. Once chosen, the pair go off to a much filmed holiday in India or the Caribbean and perform  prescribed activities. In the next episode, back in Blighty, they are summoned to the studio and interrogated. Did they get on? What were the defects in his/her character?     

 

Yes, yes, but the audience is not watching because Tom has noticed that Tracy is vague and not quite Einstein material. They want to know if they’ve, you know, done the deed? No? Well how close did they get?

 

They tell Cilla they love/hate each other. They criticise/praise each other’s social and personal qualities, including lapses in appearance, etc. Good television. Yes, but would it work for India? Nice Indian girls don’t go on blind dates. Which ‘nice, khandani’ girl can return from a Blind Date episode on Indian TV and face prospective husbands? I am content to tell Indian TV that there is no possible adaptation of this format in the present state of consciousness.

 

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are girls and boys today who want to put themselves through the humiliation of it for the sake of being seen. My suspicion is that if Indian TV ever did this as a series they would use ‘Christian’ girls as the blind daters.  Haven’t you noticed that throughout the history of Indian cinema, the sexually professional, easy or available girls in Indian films are all called ‘Bobby’, ‘Julie’ or other Anglo-Christian names rather than Sita or Samira?

 

But this week I suspended all my judgements. Someone called Shilpa Shetty has been hired to participate in a British TV show called Big Brother. It puts 12  people into a pretend studio ‘house’ for 12 weeks and gives them silly tasks to do and watches them as they sleep, eat, fight, go to the toilet and — the producers hope — strip or do exciting things alone or with others.

 

Big Brother’s participants are   not noted for their intellectual profundity. The programme’s laudable raison d’etre is to display the lowest of human intelligence and breeding in all its foul-mouthed and meaninglessly vain and antagonistic glory. Ms Shilpa Shetty was challenged on the first day of her residence by an old cockney lady, a fellow competitor.

 

This person called her ‘Princess’. Shilpa didn’t like this and said she would rather be called by her proper name. The cockney said she couldn’t pronounce her outrageous name. This led to an argument and the sort of argy-bargy the audience and producers want. Later, the cockney distributed New Year’s gifts to everyone but said she wouldn’t give anything ‘to the Indian’.

 

Such trivial humiliations constitute the day-to-day drama of Big Brother. But mainly the audience watches to see who will try and have sex with whom and how the persuasion towards this climax is contrived. I expect Ms Shetty has specified in her contract, “No sex on screen, we’re Indian!” Poor girl, she’s subjected herself to earning £350,000 for the duration — more than anything that the other participants are being paid.

 

And why? Perhaps because Ms Shetty is bringing true international multiculturalism to the vulgarity of Big Brother. She is adding Indianness to British creativity and demonstrating that Indians can be as banal and vacuous as Brits. So carry on Shilpa. These international cross-overs have to be welcome. 

 

Nevertheless, I can’t help noting that the scale of remuneration, Shilpa’s crores, is unfair. Ironically so! There are, contributing to this same great international cross-over, this exchange and understanding, several British born writers who adopt Indian ways, dress in kurtas, eat kebabs and write ‘novels’ and histories about great Indian figures, who don’t get paid a tenth of that sum for their efforts!

 

The author is a scriptwriter based in London.