Jhoom India on Sahara One

There are many a reality shows that have been seen on the various Indian TV channels by now, with the list being something like Indian Idol, Sa Re Ga Ma, Voice of India, Nach Baliye, Jhalak Dikhla Ja, Little Champs, Big Boss, and so on (you name the concept, and there is a show on that). Sahara One came out with its version, called Jhoom India. The concept being: teaming up a singer or a music composer with a well know artist. Hence, you have the following combinations.
* vinod rathod and roshni chopra,
* jatin pandit and chhavi mittal,
* akriti kakar and varun badola,
* vaishali samant and sharad kelkar,
* parthiv gohil and apara Mehta,
* madhushree and sachin tyagi,
* sunjeevni and shekhar suman,
* sudesh bhosle and mrinal kulkarni,
* jolly mukherjee and shama sikander,
* suresh wadkarr and shweta tiwari

As with the other reality shows, this show also has its fair amount of controversy, when in an episode, one of the judges Mahesh Bhatt walked out when one of the participants was rude to another judge Shabana Azmi. The third judge is Anandii of Kalyanji-Anandji fame.

You an get a recap of earlier episodes at this link.

At this point, there are a total of 3 jodis left:
1. Roshni Chopra - Vinod Rathod
2. Sachin Tyagi – Madhushree
3. Varun Badola - Akriti Kakar

The show appears on Sahara One on Friday and Saturday at 9 PM.

You can also watch some videos of Jhoom India on Youtube.

Finale of The Biggest Loser on Sahara One

Well, it finally is happening today. On September 1, the show The Biggest Loser is coming to an end, at 8 PM on Sahara One. Starting with 16 contestants in May 2007, all of whom looked like they needed to lose weight, we have seen on a weekly basis as to how they have been losing weight. At first, it seemed a bit strange to have such a program on air, after all, to have a program based on getting people to lose weight would seem like making fun of them to some extent. Then I realized that it was based on an international program. And as time passed, just like the earlier reality show called The Biggest Boss, there was a lot of play about the inter-play between the different characters, the drama and the tension (expected since the program was about eliminating people based on voting from other contestants). And there was the weekly drama about getting people down to either their shorts (or in the case of the ladies, their T-shirts and shorts), and then weighing each of them in order to get the total weight loss for the week.
One could see that there was a lot of hard work and exercise, along with control involved in getting them to lose weight. And one could see them actually losing weight on a weekly basis, and as time went by, it must have been inspiring for over-weight people to actually see the amount of weight that must have been lost due to regular exercise and control. A lot of neighborhood gyms must have benefited tremendously from this feeling about losing weight.
The presence of Suniel Shetty lent the star power to the show, although there is a sneaking suspicion that given that he is not being seen in too many movies nowadays, this is an attempt to use the glamour power of TV in order to get back to the main-stream movie business.
One good thing in the show has been the presence of fitness experts such as former physiotherapist to the Indian cricket team, Andrew Leipus as Health & Fitness Director. The team consists of Deepika Mehta & Yusef Khan who are experts & specialists in the fitness & training arena, ably assisted by Varun Shivdasani (Culinary Nutritionist) & Dr. Ajit Desai (Cardiologist). This should be a reminder to people that a rigorous weight loss program has a strong medical affect on the body and should be done only under proper advice.
So now the show has 3 people left, being Hiren who lost 40 kg, Natasha who lost 30 kg, and Sandeep who lost 41.6 kg. This is a tremendous effort, and these people deserve to be in the finals. In the course of this program, some of the contestants who were left behind were Gracious D'Costa, Ravinder Singh Sahni, Ajay Nagrath, Nirmal Soni, Sharmila Joshi, Neeraj Paul, Kiran Jethwani, Dr. Rizwan Ahmed Qureshi, Samirah Ahmed, Robin Soloman, Hemangini Merchant, Priyanka Bhayana, Muna Aleem. All of them lost varying amounts of weights but were eventually voted out one by one (either for lack of dedication or bad attitude).
Some of the highlights of the various episodes are available on the videos at this link; and then some more videos at this link

Zaara: The only major Muslim serial on air

For a country that has a significant Muslim population, there are never too many serials on air that are based on a Muslim setting. One of the prime serials on air now that is based on a Muslim family is called Zaara – Pyaar Ki Saugat, and is about the choices having to be made in life by a young lady, about the choice between love and family. Sounds familiar, does it not? Most serials on air are about choices, sacrifice, and so on. Well, Zaara – Pyaar Ki Saugat, also has all that, in the sense that it also has all the usual stuff about back-biting, jealousy between relatives and sisters, second marriage, and so on.



The serial appears on Sahara One at 8 PM every weekday, Monday to Friday, and is part of the effort by Sahara One to bring in many more serials so as to get more user TRP's. The story so far is fairly simple. Being set in an upper middle class Muslim family, the lead character played by Samiksha Jug was a student abroad in London, and has now returned to her hometown after completing her studies. While in London, she was in love with her childhood sweetheart, Samar (Abhay Vakil), and was all prepared to get married to him.
When she comes back to her hometown, she is plunged into an ethical dilemna. Her adopted sister, Zeenat (Malini Kapoor) is childless in marriage, and married to Aamir (Jatin Grewal). Zaara is waiting for Samar to come back from London and ask for her hand in marriage, when Zeenat comes in and asks for a favour. The favour is a big one, with Zaara being asked to marry Aamir so that they can have a child. In these days of surrogate mothers, of fertility and IVF treatments, one wonders why they still need to go in for a second marriage.
Updates on the serial, including videos of episodes and updates on a day-to-day basis of the story can be had from these forums. Essentially, the story has now evolved to another serial of conspiracies, acting against each other, good vs. evil, with all 4 of them, Zaara, Zeenat, Aamir and Samar now involved. No longer a serial with a difference.

Woh Rehne Waali Mehlon Ki: Videos

For those fans of the Sahara One serial, here are some of the locations where videos can be found. These are not arranged in any particular order, but if you want to watch them in order, then obviously you have not been watching the serial properly. It comes at night at 9 PM, and in the morning at 10 AM.

Google Video

Zdag.com (Rental)

Youtube

Torrent

Woh Rehne Waali Mehlon Ki: By Rajshri

This is a serial by Rajshri, and given that this serial is not from the K camp (Balaji Telefilms), the expectation was that the serial would be different from the regular saas-bahu stuff that happens on all the channels, and it was different. I liked this serial (although there were some episodes that I thought were slow and could have done with some effort to speed up things). I asked around, and looked at forum postings, and found mostly that people were appreciative of the serial. It has a nice sweet ring through the whole serial, and was nice.
The serial does have familiar elements that people find in other serials, such as a 20 year transformation happening suddenly; a saas who is a terror to her bahu (the saas is forever scheming of ways to get rid of her, including trying to burn her on a gas stove). And now relatives, who are also scheming of ways to get the family wealth.
This serial comes on Sahara at 9:00 - 9:30 PM on weekdays. Starting on May 30, 2005; it recently completed 500 episodes. The serial already has had one 20 year leap and has passed onto the next generation. The lead characters of the current episode on air have got attention due to their pleasing personalities and looks with Reena Kapoor playing the role of Rani/Pari.
The story is not very complicated. Rani was from a rich household married into a middle class family of Prince. She adjusts and wins everyone over. She has a daughter called Pari (who has a limp).
Cut to 20 years later. Rani is now dead, and Pari has been brought up by her grandmother, and then she gets married to Soumya. Soumya married Pari because he loved somebody else, but his family guru had claimed that his wife would die in 40 days, so they need somebody else to get married to Soumya first. Her family and Soumya's grandfather do not know about this. Eventually, Pari almost dies but has a memory loss. In the meantime her family gets to know and are furious. Soumya has a change of heart, and within some time, Pari also gets her memory back. She has won over everyone except for her mother-in-law who is not prepared to accept her.
Also, Soumya's uncle turns up with his son Samir (Soumya is elder by 2 days and hence is the family heir). Samir is arrogant and his parents want him to get a share. The main issue now is the tension between them. Soumya's grandfather wants to get the family to live together, but there are an incredible amount of tension in the house. Paru is trying to help in this process of reconciliation, but is hard.

The biggest loser on Sahara: Should we have such programs ?

In the line of reality programmes that are popping up left, right and center, add a new one. This is a program called 'The Biggest Loser' airing on Sahara One on Friday, Saturday and Sunday right after Sahara's most popular serial 'Woh Rehne Waali Mehlon ki". All of the reality shows draw inspiration from the success of the original KBC on Star Plus that not only got very high ratings, but even pulled up other shows on the same channel. The biggest Loser is a copy of an international program that first started in 2004.
So what is the biggest loser all about ? It is about bringing together 2 teams of 16 people in total, and forming the Red team and the Blue team. For star quotient, you have Suneil Shetty as a fading Bollywood celebrity. These teams are under the control of personal trainers who make them follow a regime of diet and exercise in order to weight lose. But not everything is nice and sweet. The teams will be weighed every day, and the team that loses less weight at the end of the week will have to remove 1 player from their team till there are only 3 people left as finalists, and the ultimate winner will get the grand prize.
The program has got a heavy boost of advertising, with a lot of promos before the start of the show, and even now, there is an incredible amount of advertising on FM radio. Sahara really seems to believe that this will be the show that will bring it up. When you watch the show, already one person has been kicked out, and some of my worst fears are coming to light.
In order to make this a selling program, they will have to put in a large amount of emotion and drama, and you can assume that with the lure of money, there will be a lot of peer pressure, especially in a situation where one person can be seen as making a team fail.
So what are the things that can go wrong:
- Weight loss and gain is a very person dependent nature. It is nice to say that if a person eats less and does more exercise, then there will be a weight loss. This is however a very simplistic statement. Weight loss depends on a person's biology, their metabolic clock, and so on.
- Point related to the one above. People can not lose weight for weeks under a strict regime, and then start losing weight suddenly. Under the program situation, such a person would get kicked out very quickly.
- In India, people who are fat or obese suffer a lot of social pressure, with total strangers coming to them and offering about how to lose weight; if they go to social occasions where there is food, people will admonish them to eat less, and so on. In such situations, if a person gets kicked out for not losing weight,
then it is very likely that a person can conclude that even with trainers and diet regime, it is impossible to lose weight and be extremely disappointed.
- Slim people watching this show are more likely to go to fatter people and offer even more advise such as getting trainers or controlling their diet.
- There is a real risk of biological damage under a harsh regime. The human body needs to slowly settle into a new regime, not suddenly be exposed to massive changes. Under channel pressure, even expert trainers could be provoked into pushing these people much harder than necessary.
- One is not sure about the level of safety in such programmes. If you read this article by Sakshi, then you can see that unsafe events are happening.
There are some plus points of the programme, such as maybe pushing more people to take care of their bodies, but my overall impression is that of a channel willing to do anything to gain more ratings.

Music reality shows, their judges and fighting ..

I was watching Hero Honda Sa Re Ga Ma Pa for the first time in this season. It was really good to see that Ashaji is there for the judgement,she makes everybody feel so proud that we have such a gem in India.
I have written about this show earlier also but I could not resist writing again on it again. Watching this show after all the melodramatic shows during the week (any family drama you watch) brings the moments of freshness and pride that we have so much great talent in the world. On the same hour, a new show named Voice of India hosted by Shaan and judged by Alka Yagnik, Abhijeet, Aadesh Srivastava and Jatin or Lalit(i am not sure). Everybody who is watching these shows can easily make the difference between these two shows, partly due to the quality of judges. Without doubt, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa has more weight. But one question that came into my mind was abouot why did Shaan not host the show? He had left this show and Zee TV also and switched over to Star Plus. Sure there must be some differences, but nodoby is saying anything much...
I could sense that there is a discomfort between Himesh Reshamiya and Ashaji when the two
contestants of Himesh's gharana were judged. I was quite satisfied with what Ashaji said but the tone sometimes Himesh uses is so rude and full of attitude. The arrogance comes right through. I dont know whether this is just to gain publicity and increase the TRPs or whether it is actual.
It is equally likely that all this fighting is there to keep user interest, given that these people are all in the show business, and Himesh has a movie coming up soon (Aap Ka suroor; so far I have yet to find a friend who will publicly admit that he/she will watch the movie). But I just hope this show keeps going on like this...All the Best!!!

Ghar Ek Sapna - Can be interesting if handled correctly

This is a serial that has only spent around 4 months on air, and by the standard of Indian soap operas, it has only just started, so the story is sure to take on a number of twists and turns. One thing is clear though, it is very different from the K-serial type saas bahu serials. Here people are shown with good parts and bad parts, but you can see a motive. You do not get to see somebody being evil just because the director wanted to cast that character as evil.
This serial started only a few months back and is broadcast on Sahara One. It stars such leading characters as Alok Nath, Himani Shivpuri. The people playing the lead cast are Ujjwal Rana (Samman) and Shayantani Ghosh (Kakul). The story is somewhat different from other stories. It revolves around forced marriage, and what impact this forced marriage has on the lives of the people involved. A sensitive topic, when handled with care. Since the director of this serial is Ajai Sinha, who earlier directed Astitva - Ek Prem Kahani, one can hope that this subject will be treated in a good way.
So what is the serial all about ? It is about Samman from a metro, and Kakul from Bihar. Samma is already in love with Vanshika. They meet at a marriage, and Samman flirts with her. Kakul falls for him. In a twist of fate, Kakul's brother-in-law forces Samman to marry her at gun-point, and Samman does that out fear for his life. He certainly does not love her. His family refuses to accept her, but slowly she is able to convert most of them to like her. Samman's mother however cannot do so, and continues to detest her.
Another turning point in the serial comes when Samman finally forces her to leave the house and go back to her father's house. He does this even when he is scared of whether this could cause problems due to Kakul's family. Another twist (although somewhat predictable) comes at this precise interval when you see Kakul turning sick. Having watched enough serials, you know that she has to be pregnant, and of course she is.
However, she still leaves, but does not tell her father that the marriage is over. So, her father is glorious over her pregnancy even when the rest are wondering how to tell him. However, he is not very stupid, and so realizes that something is wrong and needs more investigation. This is where the story is at this point of time. Samman in the meantime is with Vanshika who accepts him back with the condition that he can never meet Kakul again.