R for Reel-ity shows

Enough are the daily soaps! Now the audience needs some masala-gossip in the purest form. This has given way to the new mantra called Reality shows. But I am sure half of the janta watches it in anticipation of how much real can it get for them. Take for instance 'Rakhi Ka Swayamvar'. Now is she really going to marry one of them or should I be asking the other way round? The drama queen that she is, anyone can tell you that it is all a sham. I even heard that she has decided not to marry any one of them courtesy some news channel and that the finalists will be given the choice of huge amount of money or Rakhi Sawant. So what do we call this? Reel or real? Just getting the audience hooked onto it to increase the TRP and then winding up the show with no results is what a reality show is all about.

Well, lets leave Rakhi for a change. Another show 'Sach ka Samna' is ruining lives of couples by asking them very personal questions that even the husband or wife might not have asked each other. And they claim to measure the truth of the answer with the help of polygraph test which is not even the firmly established test for measuring the truth level. And what do the participants get in return by answering all of them truly - huge amount of money and a family wounded by facing the truth or must I say exposing the truth to the public? But any publicity be it good or bad is doing great for the channel, so no worries.On top of it, the show claims to bring families even closer by revealing the dirty secrets in people's lives. Never heard of this psychology. It still remains a mystery to me as to how this can possibly be achieved. How can it be real when there is so much money involved? But still they call them reality shows.

Now there is this new one called 'Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao' which is the Indian version of 'I am a celebrity. Get me out of here'. Yes and half of the reality shows are copied ideas. There are many more like the abominable 'Big Boss' with its abominable participants and their controversies and fights and all these shows have only one thing in common- wasting people's time! I would have never said this but looking at the theme of Indian reality shows these days makes me think our daily soaps are much better than that. At least they say 'All characters are fictional and bear no resemblance to any event'. There might be exceptions but the majority of the so called reality shows are just altering the reality and pretending to be real or using reality to increase TRPs and simply mint money.