By Bikram Vohra

Imagine this scenario. It is not hard to do. A typical middle class Indian home in Delhi. Father walks into son’s room, sees apple of his eye glued to his studies and shouts, “You foolish boy, stop wasting your time, why aren’t you singing and dancing, the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa selection is on in one week.”

Across the country, in a small hamlet in Andhra, mother sews together some garish costume so little Usha can whirl about to the strains of Aaja Nachle and somewhere two hours away by air in Punjab, Pappu the poppet is feted by the neighbours because Javed Jaffery praised his ability to moonwalk and exulted over his convincing rendition of ‘Kabhi Kabhi.’

Love songs and largesse at seven years and four months.

With 60 hours of such mind numbing drivel on TV every day and the total dedication of millions of mothers and fathers fondly hoping for a bonanza, the Indian middle class and its traditionally ignored lower end are finally getting their seven minutes of fame. The point is what price are we paying for that limelight and when will it turn sour on a generation exponentially dedicating itself to gyrating in sync with the lyrics of l’amour before they have turned the hairpin bend of puberty?

It is not a global phenomenon. Let’s not kid ourselves. It is not even a welcome splash of colour in a grey life, which is the sort of air-conditioned tripe the rich and comfortable fling like mud clods at the not-so-affluent.

Such entertainment is fine as a diversion, a sort of also ran in the race to adulthood, but when it becomes a fetish, an obsession that is pathetic in its gluttony, its lack of any redeeming quality and is bedrocked in precocious tastelessness, then we need to worry. Pandemic mediocrity that will turn poisonous even as we cheerfully behave as if it is harmless fun.

I think of Marallus in Julius Caeser expressing despair; Run to your house and fall upon your knees, pray to the gods to intermit this plague that befalls thee. Greed is never harmless. The chase after fool’s gold always comes with a price. Greed at runaway speed is ugly. When adults use prime time insults to belittle children they are not hardening the kids for life’s stony path, they are mocking them for cheap laughs and ratings in a nation where humour has been doled in measly fashion and linked to ailment: stuttering, being fat or crippled.

The survey figures indicate that as many as 30 million children are watching a show of their peers engaged in song and dance routines at some time or the other in a given day while thousands bid for live presence and dry mouthed, anxious parents sit in suspense for cruelly over-rated assessments of nascent talent.

A study of the sociological implications of the crude and often tasteless remarks made by the judges, the precocious conversations masquerading as humour, the deep analysis of a love song would fall just short of statutory rape of minors because the invasion is so complete as to make the physical violation integral.

And in case I come out like some pulpit pounding neurotic, ask yourselves how this tsunami in gross bad taste is brainwashing our children and their parents who actually sit there like airheads and watch their children being lacerated by the so-called judges. Not for winning a debate or a spelling bee, not for coming out tops in a quiz or even displaying the skill for the arts and sciences, sport and the classics, but only for the imitation of commercial pap.

When I began this article I just wanted to moan and groan about falling standards until an advertising friend of mine (okay, we all have some weaknesses) sent me some figures. Three hundred million manhours down the drain watching this stuff. Every day. Almost 15 per cent of the budget by consumer companies dedicated to this genre, thereby making them accomplices in the charade that this is fun and games. It is not.

The corruption of pre-teens is nearly total if you look at the statistics. Except for live Twenty20 cricket and the one-dayers, these song and dance travesties account for maximum family viewing. What makes one sick to the stomach is that neither the channels nor the producers nor the participants and judges think they are contributing to the greater bad.

The poverty of intellect is astounding. Beating up on little children is a sport and the torturous patronizing of the defeated makes one search for a bucket. The biggest problem is to get enough people to listen to the beat of the pied piper and realize that his malevolent tune is stealing our children away from their childhood. You start tom tomming the mediocrity inherent in such shows and everyone has this ‘oh, come on, it is just kids’ look on their faces.

So come on, son, leave the books alone and put on your costume and your ghungroos.