Living in a locality in Kolkata that overlooked a sprawling bustee (an illegal slum), one of the joys of urban life was to witness, from time to time, dog-fights/cat-fights between denizens of the bustee, usually fought out in the vicinity of the Shib Mandir (which housed a Shiv Lingam, a carrom board and a bamboo stand on which was pasted copies of Ganashakti), where in front of a crowd of screaming inhabitants of the said bustee, those in conflict would let loose. Wife beating up drunk husband. Woman shouting at the other woman. Father beating up drug-addict son. Two druggies throwing punches. Mother yelling at daughter caught “red-handed”. Passers-by would stop casually, just listening to the general conversation as the assembled crowd passed judgment, threw out advice, sometimes came in between if the fist throwing became serious and periodically noisily murmured their taunting disapprobation or whole-hearted approval.
What I did not realize then and I do now is that I was watching advance episodes of Rakhi ka Insaaf, (premiered recently on NDTV Imagine) which has brought to the world of Indian television the cerebral classiness of watching a drunken lout of a husband being beaten up by chappals while he wallows in the drain singing vulgar songs, a show that promises to go where no show has ever gone before. And how can it not? It is after all helmed by Rakhi Sawant, or the “Arundhati Roy of reality television, the God of large-sized artificial things”.
Continue reading ‘Rakhi Springer’
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