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| From tears to laughter | ||
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| I have distinguished between TV tears and those from real life on TV. And now I come to the tears which have caused least pain to viewers. There is a programme called Shukriya (Thanks) on NDTV where well-known celebrities, mostly from the film world, give thanks, as the title implies, to all those who helped them along in their personal and professional lives. It could be Sushmita Sen or Rani Mukherji - it is mostly women, who make the crying part of it more easy, very few men cry on the programme. The tears start flowing, from both the celebrity and her mother, as she recounts how dear Mom gave her a loving upbringing, presumably with no slaps on the bottom or harsh words when they broke family rules. | ||
| Even John Abraham was accepted by the family and Sushmita's adopted daughter Renee said some sweet things which made Sushmita and everyone else in sight cry. By the time each programme finishes, with family, friends, professional gurus and fellow actors having had their say, buckets have been wept and enough water collected to solve the water shortage in the immediate neighbourhood. Yes, tears play a big part in the shukriya. I must remind you that a programme by the same producers on Zee channel, Yeh Bhi Hai Zindagi (I hope I have got the title right) had the same friends, relations, professional gurus and colleagues popping up in the programme, allegedly by surprise, but it was all laughter and jokes and lots of fun. It is upto you to decide which you preferred. For myself, I found so much sweetness and honey in shukriya, with not a note of dissent or disagreement, that far from weeping buckets I found it a little too good to be true. Sorry, but I prefer to be cheerful. | ||
| From tears to laughter, I am afraid I am not one of those who find the official laughter programmes that funny, not even whey have Shekhar Suman and Navjot Singh Sidhu. It is mostly ribald laughter rather than subtle jokes, more reminiscent of the laughter in the older Bombay films which began with someone slipping on a banana peel. So it was with a vast sense of relief that I watched some genuinely funny April Fool pranks on April 1, widely celebrated as All Fools Day. And the one I enjoyed most was when two of NDTV's reporters, with completely dead-pan faces, made an ass (if Mr Sindhu will forgive my suing the phrase, since he feels free to use much stronger expressions about his victims) of Sidhu what the reporters did was to pretend they had come to interview him (which indeed they had, but not seriously). And they first annoyed him by calling him a spin bowler. The more Sindhu angrily protested, the more they kept on apologising but called him the same. | ||
| Then they referred to him as Cherry, whereas he revels in the pet name of Sherry. Sidhu painfully and angrily explained to them that cherry is a fruit and sherry a lady's wine. It was only when he had completely lost his temper and betrayed his outsize ago that a colleague appeared and told him he was an April Fool. | ||
| Similarly, a large number of fashion designers were caught off guard at the Mumbai Fashion show when designer Sabyasachi Mukherji and anchor Aneesha Baig told them individually that Liz Hurley had chosen them to design her outfits. They all fell for it and a good laugh was had by all. May we keep it that way. | ||
