Its my Indyeah!!!

TV has become boring off late. Most of the time I'll be surfing music channels and news channels. And I do miss VH1, what with V and MTV ruled by the likes of Himesh. The only show I watch regularly is 'My India Report[MIR]' in V. Its a really cool concept with 6 youngsters selected from various parts of India travelling all over India. During this journey they discover different cultures, path breaking thoughts, shocking truths and share it all with us. As far as i think, this show is conceived as an amalgamation of the themes of 2 popular films-'motorcycle diaries[MD]' and 'rang de basanti[RDB]'. The idea of a country round trip from 'MD' and the idea of the nation awakening from 'RDB'. There were so many interesting thoughts that came out from their visits to various cities.

The team comprises of an interesting mix of people including a lady bartender and an artist based in Canada. Every episode, they'll be posing some questions to some random people they see on the road. In Varanasi[India at its religious best], they surveyed about belief in God among the youngsters there and found that most of them were god fearing but not mad about the religion they follow. This should serve as an eye opener for some 'religiously' political parties in India. One taxi driver gave an interesting discourse which would put even well known philosophers to shame. These are the things which tell you that you should never underestimate anyone. In Kolkata, the team found out that Che guevera is more popular than sourav ganguly. Is it the 'MD' effect or the good old love for communism? Yesterday, they went to Shillong, India's rock music capital. This city was in the news recently for showcasing the largest guitar ensemble in the world as 1730 guitarists strummed together for the Bob Dylan classic "knocking on heaven's door". Its told that almost everyone you meet on the road is a musician. There are more than 100 rock bands in the city alone. After meeting up with some bands and musicians, the team went to an NGO. There they met a woman who suffered a lot in her life. She was a servent in a household and her master sold her to other men. She somehow rescued herself from a brothel and helped the police to bust a big racket which specialised in human trafficking. According to her, more than 300 girls were rescued from there. She and other women like her are being given a chance to live a new life by the NGO.

Besides these interesting and sometimes touching anecdotes and opinions, what I found interesting about MIR is the nice camera work. Wherever they go, we are treated to some amazing visuals which really make us wonder whether there are such places in India. These visuals sometimes remind me of the great BBC documentary 'The story Of India'. I downloaded this documentary running close to 7 hours some months back. I would recommend it to those who want to see some unseen but breath takingkly beautiful visuals of India. Coming back to MIR, there are still some more episodes to go. Those who have missed it, try to catch it at 7.30pm on thursdays. Am not telling that all of what is shown on MIR makes sense. Sometimes they do sound absurd. But most of the time its really good and shows us some little known but interesting things about our motherland

PS- In MIR, there is so much talk on the lack of values and too much of skin show on television. It might be an irony that all this happens in a channel which has shows like Pia's beach diaries, where you have an anchor wearing just a bikini and strolling along the beach and 'India's hottest' which awards people based on how hot they are.

your crusader Praveen