Rakhi’s quantum squeak
Admittedly, we’ve not gone as far down the line as the current celebrity scandal hitting the Western press — a Vogue interview given by Ryan O’ Neal (Farrah Fawcett’s ex-husband and Oliver Barrett IV from Love Story) to the effect that he tried chatting up his own daughter, actress Tatum O’ Neal, at Farrah’s funeral — he thought she was “some strange Swedish lady”.
But India is getting there. We are turning out to be as celebrity crazy as the decadent West — and consequently, turning our celebrities crazier. In some ways, we are even more hungry for that famous people touch, because most Indian versions of American and British shows that featured ordinary people replace them with ‘stars’ (down-and-out celebrities desperate for a comeback). And most importantly, having a phenomenon called Rakhi Sawant in the country always helps up the bizarro quotient.
As you are no doubt aware, Sawant has just chosen the man she wants to marry on national television — the ‘news’ made it to the headlines of most TV channels, which breathlessly and predictably tracked the countdown to ‘the’ moment.
Rakhi has always claimed she is, at heart, a simple Indian girl, and now she has the bonafides to prove it. After all, didn’t Sita and Draupadi choose their husbands through swayamvars?
You have to admit, though, that the idea has a certain piquancy to it, though we can’t make an exclusive claim on it as an exotic and fast-dying Indian tradition — shows such as The Bachelorette have dealt with the whole spouse-choosing thing on American TV.
But who better than the girl who has practically taken Indian reality TV to the heights it has reached single-handedly to bring the concept home?
Yes, there are other Indian celebs who have made a career out of featuring in each and every reality/talent show going and have taken ‘famous for being famous’ to a whole new level, but none as high-profile or as obsessively followed as Rakhi.
After exploring all the possible formats of reality TV ever adapted for Indian television — as far as I can make out, apart from showcasing singing talent she’s done just about everything else — what could be more natural than for her to choose a husband on TV?
The show may have distinct similarities with The Bachelorette, but, in this case at least, I think we can exonerate studio bosses of lifting a tried-and-tested reality TV formula. I really do believe the persona Rakhi has created for herself dictated the show. It was, in a way, inevitable.
The studio bosses may have gone a bit like this: “Ok, so she’s been on a dance show, a famous-people-cooped-up-in-a-house show, she’s hosted a chat show, slapped her boyfriend and broken up with him on national news… but there has to be something we have missed. Got it! Let her be the first Indian celeb to find herself a husband through a quasi talent-hunt.”
Till there, I’m fine, really. Some may say the show makes a mockery of marriage, but is it that different from your average arranged marriage — except that the girl gets to call the shots?
But, for many of us, the show simply didn’t work because it turned Rakhi into an unrecognisable, simpering, coy, bride-to-be. Gone was the zaniness, the unpredictable and sometimes startling honesty about herself and other people and the naiveté that had endeared her to viewers in shows such as Bigg Boss and Koffee With Karan.
In letting the directors of this show transform her into a strange mix between a sentimental Miss Goody Two Shoes from a K-serial and a Yash Raj diva in elegant Manish Malhotra saris, Rakhi Sawant made the monumental error of losing her USP.
With it, she lost the edginess that differentiated her from the crowd of Manish Malhotra sari-clad divas, who are, after all, dime a dozen.
The transformation probably started some time ago, when she, with her then boyfriend Abhishek Awasthi, participated in the dance reality show Nach Baliye. That’s when the fake simpering first made an appearance, though it was later overshadowed by the enormous tantrum she threw when she failed to win the contest.
And that was the Rakhi we expected to see on this show too — the spoilt girl for whom adjectives such as bratty, brash and crass just roll off the tongue. Not this coy maiden who had tears rolling down her damask cheek as she watched one of her suitors making a colossal fool of himself on the dance floor.
Now there are cries that the show was a sham, that all the drama and sensational revelations were put-up jobs, that she and her chosen one, Elesh Parujanwala, are going to discreetly break up after a while — though not before they have milked their couplehood dry by appearing on several other shows — but I suspect nobody’s really going to care if that does happen.
Ultimately, what the show has done is create yet another C-list celebrity in the form of Purujanwala, demonstrated that we are not that far from the Ryan O’ Neal variety of indiscretion if hundreds of our young men are willing to give up their well-ordered lives in order to marry the country’s chief item girl, and that we really don’t know who Rakhi Sawant is — despite the fact that she practically lives on TV.
