Ghodi, Sherwani and Band Party

(Published in Banking Services Chronicle June 2007)

Marriages are made in heaven. But they are celebrated as weddings on earth. And there too Indian weddings overshadow those in other parts of the globe. If the meticulous carrying out of rituals makes an Indian wedding an elaborate affair, the pomp and show attached to it goes on to make it a glorious occasion. Every Indian becomes the lead actor in at least one film and that is their wedding. Literally so, given the craze for video recording.

No wonder then that when it comes to the wedding of the most eligible bachelor and the most beautiful woman the media goes simply crazy. It hardly matters that the channels and their cameras have been kept away from the glorious occasion by design. The media knows how to wait and entertain its viewers from the sidelines while doing so.

The publicity given to the tying of knot between Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai was an astonishing one. Critics accuse the media of dwelling too much on trivia. They say Ekta Kapur has contributed to the degeneration of content through her saas-bahu serials. And the news channels think editing is only about scene-sequencing. Caring about the quality of content is simply absent from their agenda.
The defence of the content-providers — both in the case of fact and fiction — is that they sell what the people are willing to buy. And the proof of the pudding lies in its taste — TRP ratings, to be more forthright. Their job is not to create taste but to satisfy it.

Call it channel-viewer nexus, if you will. But this nexus is certain to continue over the next few years. In fact, there is no reason to believe why it won’t. Improving your standard of living is much easier than raising your level of thinking. Getting a cable or DTH connection needs little effort as compared to upping your intellectual antenna.

So get ready to dance to the tunes of “Krazy kiya re” and Sha-ka-la-ka Boom Boom. Both on and off the screen. In the world of ghodi, sherwani and band party.