Breaking rules on roadies

I am stunned by the tendency towards violence shown by some roadies! When casting for the show, Rajiv and I knew that we had selected some interesting personalities, who would also be difficult to get along with. I could see the personality clashes happening even at that stage. But I never imagined that it would escalate to this level with Palak attacking Tamanna and Pradeep bullying Devarshi. Now that puts me and the team in a big dilemma. On one side is our commitment to shoot exactly what happens and to show it, whether that is pretty or not. We do not judge. We simply stand back and document. Viewers are free to react as they want to. On the other hand is my aversion to any kind of bullying, having been heavily bullied myself as a kid in school. And we do not condone violence. I know a lot of people will think that we are showing violence to help our ratings, but that is not so. Roadies has been doing extremely well so far without violence and since we never attempted to get any cheap publicity when the show was still growing, we definitely are not going to start now, when there is absolutely no requirement for it.

To get real behaviour out of the cast members, it is essential that the crew becomes "invisible" to them. There can be no interference whatsoever.

When Jade Goody bullied Shilpa Shetty in Big Brother, there was a huge uproar. I took strong objection to it as well, especially since there were racial undertones to the bullying. Unfortunately, they had no tools to try and put an end to it. We do.

Rannvijay interacts with the roadies at specific points in each episode. He does give them stern warning against indulging in violent behaviour. But not before another violent incident.

Palak VS Tamanna, round 2. That both girls have strong personalities and cannot stand each other, is obvious. It does not help that both seem to like the same guy, Nauman. In today's episode, Palak sees Tamanna and Nauman getting cozy and the proverbial shit hits the ceiling. As usual, neither of the girls back down and things degenerate to physical violence.

I wish the violence had not happened. But we made our decision. Apart from breaking our biggest rule and talking to the roadies off camera to warn them against hitting each other, we would shoot their group dynamics in its entirety, including the ugly bullying, and show it. We know people will mistakenly think we're promoting violence and hate us. We're ok with it…