Was it all necessary?

The viewers are left with mixed reactions after watching this week’s two musical reality shows – Chhote Ustaad and K for Kishore. There were good and entertaining themes and some fabulous performances, yet they had something lacking - both the shows lacked sensitivity on Saturday and in both the shows a participant each had to face unpleasant moments that was totally demoralizing. At this stage of the show, both the incidents could have been done without.

From this week the stage performances started for SVOI Chhote Ustaads. The participants, all of them gave rocking performances on Friday. Vyom faced elimination and he made his exit very gracefully. One shortcoming of Friday was Abhhas probing the participants guardian’s for sensational comments or emotional talks which wasn’t really required. Saturday both Aishwarya and Anvesha gave brilliant performances. While judges went generous with praise for other two, in Prakriti’s case, it was just the reverse! Kunal and Shreya, especially Kunal, was very harsh in his criticism of Prakriti after the rendition of the first song! They left the little girl visibly upset with her confidence badly shaken, which in fact has an impact on her second performance, where she was not up to the mark. The judges, made it distinctly clear on who they wanted to see in the finals. Did Prakriti deserve such a rude treatment? They could have commented on her performance but not in such a demoralizing way. Why do these judges forget that as judges, they have to remain neutral and they should inspire the participants and not demoralize them or dent their self confidence? Another point was going for the eliminations in the stage-show rounds? Getting eliminated or judged critically in front of so many people can really shake up a participant’s confidence level affecting future performances especially keeping in mind that this is a kid’s series.

K for Kishore this week was a Rajesh Khanna special where each participant had to sing two songs of Kishore Kumar picturized on Rajesh Khanna with each song representing a different mood. Apart from that, they had to identify the song and sing two lines from the clues given by Nagesh Kukunoor in the Director’s Choice Special round. While some performed very well, some of them were not that good. Kishore Bhakt – Vinay Nadkarni’s special way of paying tribute to Kishore Kumar was a show stealer on Friday and had all those present in the sets in splits. This show is totally “Besura” as far as a fixed format goes with the format changing "Scales" or "Notes" as per whims of the producer. This week, in the director’s choice special, Arnab Chakraborty was chosen the topper by Nagesh, while the overall topper was Nayan. Apurva got eliminated this week, but the way eliminations were done and Amanat the other one in the bottom two got treated, was in very poor taste. Getting such a negative treatment from fellow contestants can demoralise anyone in such a contest. The AV on Amit Paul and the visit of his fellow participants also seemed more for dramatic effects to spice up the show and increase the TRP’s.

While last week, we sighed a heave of relief to see music rule the shows, this week unfortunately despite such brilliant performances, the behavior of some stood out like sore thumb. If this was done to generate more public interest to raise TRP’s or generate more votes, then it indeed was a very sad state of affair.

Author: Barnali

Note: The views expressed are solely of the author. For any information, please contact the author.