Sa Re Ga Ma Pa! sponsored by LULU Hypermarket

24th March, 2006 - the day when I got 2 free tickets for the live recording of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, the Indian singing competition show played on Zee TV, the day where the true colours of typical Indians once again flashed on my face and also the day when I ate KFC for the first time in over a year. I took Romit along with me, because he was my closest friend who knew atleast something about Sa Re Ga Ma Pa.

Okay - you know how much I despise Indian Television, so I need to clearify why I went - I went because I was curious to know what happened behind the scenes. As in the 'Talias', the outakes and the ever prominent mistakes. Basically I took it as a learning curve, but it was more of farce, quite honestly.

Poor organisation, poor performances and extremely extremely irritating audience which, unfortunately Romit and I were a part of, but please note that we were not even close to the major contributors of irritation.

Firstly, inspite of having Very Very Important Person (VVIP) tickets, we were seated in the row furthest away from the stage, an area which didn't even come close to making the television frame. Later, when we did make it to the front, we were not too surprised to see people with the passes for the wrong day in the front row, after all it was an event organised by us Indians.

After every imaginary commercial break, Shaan started the program with a rather animated 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa- Middle East Ka Mukabla, sponsered by Lulu Hypermarket' - as if we, and the eventual television viewers, were retarded. You know what, maybe we were, because our retard-ness was emphasized when a few of us joined him in a truly 'wonderful' chorus. However this intro had more energy than all the participants combined - so that's good in way, isn't it?

I completely agree with Romit who said that the eventual dull and uninteresting winner will only end up as a back-up singer, for some sidey melodramatic hindi soap opera. All of them lacked, completely lacked star quality. They were like boiled eggs who couldn't move and who didn't even know the words to the songs they sung. One of the participants sung one of his songs twice because 'he forgot the words'. And guess what, this 'forgot-the-song-words' guy was the evetual winner. Uptill now, it was all a drag. After the intial fascination, all that followed was sheer boredom and apathy. Only one of the performers, Paresh, was decent. He was the crowd favourite. But, guess what, he did not win. The words-forgetter won. It was at this moment that things got exciting. The crowd was up in rebellion. The uncles, and aunties and Ali's Bhainji's all stood up and started screaming and taunting the TV producers - 'give this man chance one more!' And instead of ignorance, Ismailji, the gangster looking, bearded, long haired 'music' director, added coal to the fire and confronted the audience. At this point it got hilarious. Only after Paresh played the good boy and accepted his defeat did the crowd quieten. That was the end of the semi-finals.

The producers tried to get some order in the auditorium, and asked all the NON VVIP people to vacate the front row seats. Obviously this didn't happen. The co-ordinator then announced that saving seats was not allowed. But, he forgot that he was speaking to Indians. So instead of the stopage of this practise, the ambivalent public thought that this obviously meant that more seats needed to be saved. That was the explanation to the scattered empty seats in a supposed full auditorium.

From the last row, we tried to get into the first few rows. This was a difficult process, as more and more people were trying to get into the already front Sheikh Rashid auditorium. We, well we wanted to be on TV, and we were considerably large so we made into the first section. There were 4 empty seats next to us, so a man innocently came and sat there. A couple of minutes later, uncleji and auntyji came and told him to get up from their seats. They were like these are our seats, we were sitting on them earlier. The young man didn't know what to say. Then uncleji was like, 'Leave these people alone, they don't understand manners'. Hello, freak! Uncleji, don't you get it! Saving seats is not allowed, hell you had not even saved them. Don't you dare go on about morals and manners - people - ahh!

The supposed 15 minute break between the semi-finals and the finals strected to about 3 hours, which is not that bad, considering Indian standards. We obviously didn't wait. But my parents, who had also come along, were also there and they waited.

The canteen had its own story. It had some food, so there has to be some chaos. And there was, people were fighting for food, which did not look too good, as if they had never seen anything like it. Pushing, throwing and yelling for a useless burger and a Pepsi gave me a picture of savages fighting for food to survive.

We exited, and advised a few people outside, that it was not worth it. We then walked to KFC in Khao Gully, and I relished my first scrumptious leg piece. The genius combination of deliciously fried skin and well marinated meat, provided saliva for my mouth, that made me consume every bite like it was the last.

A profoundly deep and interesting conversation with Romit and his company was the only useful thing that illustrious day. My belief of the deficiency and discrepancy of Indian Television was further amplified. It was a memorable and learning experience - how not to be and how not to produce a television show.