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Channel: COLORS
Serial Timing: SAT-SUN - 10PM
Cast: ANCHOR
Produced by: COLORS

The Review

Zindagi Ki Haqeeqat Se Aamna Samna

It’s a sham!

Cunningly veiled behind a 3-second disclaimer that says it is a scripted and enacted one, the show actually leads the unsuspecting viewers up the garden path and they feel it is presenting slices of real life in it.

That’s because there is no other signal in the show that it is not life, but a dramatised melodrama which it actually is and has been put together by professional actors to feed upon the sentimentality of a lay viewer for TRP’s. There have been many shows that have enactments, but they take pains to make it clear to the audience that these are not real (like in ‘Crime Patrol’ etc.)

‘Aamna Saamna’ does nothing of the sort! In fact, its anchors go to a long length in having the gumption of looking into the camera thereby addressing us viewers directly and waxing eloquent about how they are bringing to us a ‘tryst with truth’!

But it is a hollow claim and everybody from those self-appointed ‘truth-vendors’, anchoring it, to the accuser and the accused, to the investigating team, to the nondescript Jury – each and everybody has been paid to be there and create a ruckus for ‘exciting’ the audience rather than illuminating them with even a shred of reality.

So when in the opening episode the case ‘Kiran Bawa versus Rakesh Bawa’ is featured, where Kiran is seeking divorce from hubby Rakesh because of his apparent infidelity, heaps and loads of ugly spats follow with bucketfuls of tears all around – and everything has been rehearsed and shot with takes and retakes (imagine the director calling – ‘One more – Chappal zara zor se maaro… roll camera…!’)

In the process, Kiran’s father howls at the errant son-in-law and the mother wails like a banshee. Kiran doesn’t lag behind in the tear-marathon, either and all of them take turns in pouncing at and punching Rakesh heartily!

The plot thickens when the actors playing investigators arrive at a scoop that Rakesh once checked in some hotel in Pune with a woman as Mr & Mrs Rakesh Bawa!

Another round of pouncing & punching starts and the girl pretends as if she is conking out because of the shock. Nothing of the sort happens and she returns to her seat. And now Rakesh has a trump card up his sleeve and brings the Hotelwaali Mrs Bawa there. In choking tones, just the correct quivering of lips and eyes bursting with pain (all acting, of course), he unfolds the story that the woman had been an old flame and their liaison had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. However, she married someone else and went out of his life, totally and forever.

Further, he claims to have bumped into her accidentally and discovered her to be a divorcee and in dire straits, financially.

So he was only helping her in an hour of distress and trying to take care of the child (actually fathered by him) out of sheer humane considerations! They had checked in that Pune hotel, because the boy had to be admitted to a boarding school there in the city.

Ah, so lofty, so noble – and so totally false!

Actually, neither he is her husband, not she his wife, nor does the child belong to any of them and nor those breast-beating ‘parents’ have even the remotest connection with the ‘daughter’ Kiran, over whose lot they are bawling their guts out.

At last, the ‘plot’ – not life – ends on a happy note and the anchors give us another spiel about more ‘Trysts with the Truth’ in the coming episodes, which would, of course, once again have a full dose of pouncing, punching, abusing and cursing to make sitting owls of the audience, who, in all likelihood, cannot come to know from that 3-second disclaimer that it’s all hokum & hocus-pocus and instead of Reality, it’s brazenly unadulterated and unabashed theatrics that forms its structure!

The irony is that this sham is on a Channel that has always had such an uppity, holier-than-thou stance! Of course, technically they cannot be put in a dock thanks to the 3-second disclaimer, but there is something called ‘ethics’ and ethically, it is there bounden duty to make it crystal clear to the viewers that it is all fake and fabricated. There has to be at least a voice-over apprising the viewers of it all having been pre-plotted like a ‘Soap’ opera.

That apart, the show is also nothing to write home about in either its mounting or technique that are strictly routine and the ‘actors’ pretending to be real people are plain overblown and over-the-top.

It’s a pity such humbug is inflicted on unsuspecting audiences in the design of a Reality-show!

- Vierendra Bhargav