Things that need to be screened / censored in India..

In today's times when people are not shy to name a movie 'The Dirty Picture' and is well appreciated by the audience, a certain Mr. Kapil Sibal hit upon a noble idea to pre-screen social networking contents. You can read my article on this topic here (which, by the way, was well appreciated, contrary to my perception). Anyways, here I intend to write a light-hearted post. Mr. Sibal has actually given me and our fellow countrymen an idea on things we think should be screened / censored before being out in the open. You can think of anything under the sun and can comment on the same. Here's what I thought under the sun - 

Image: redbubble.com

1. Innumerable chair shots in Parliament: Not that we don't like watching it!! See, the thing is, today's kids watch TV all the time. And apart from watching TV, they also like to surf. Once in a while, they might bump onto Lok Sabha TV (which we thought never existed). Chances are pretty high that they will come across a WWE'sque match with a referee (chair-person) who cannot even ring the bell to call off the match. Watching is fine for kids, and there's no problem till now. It becomes a problem when they blindly follow the leaders their parents have voted for. We Indians don't have too many chairs in our house and unlike the parliament, we buy our own chairs. 

2. Daily Soaps: Most of the Indian women will object to this, but I have to write this. As was explained in the first point, watching is fine. It's a problem only when the same stuff is replicated in real life. You don't want to compare two (or more) bahu's and start judging them. You don't want a saas to think that she was a better bahu than her bahu. Writing the previous line made me sick - I can only imagine what my readers are going through!! I can understand that this is the favorite topic on which Indian house-wives have a viewpoint on. And they are ready to watch repeat telecast of the same serials they watched a night ago - maybe to see if they missed a line or an expression that can define the next episode!! Who knows - I am just speculating.

3. Reality shows: It started with a bang. I must admit -  I used to follow reality shows like Roadies, Khatron ke Khiladi (because I loved Fear Factor), Emotional Atyachaar (because I knew it was fake and characters are models who intend to be future actors), Bigg Boss (because I genuinely liked the concept till I realized all this was staged). Though these shows are different, it became more of a repetition with different characters doing the same role again! No new story-line, you see. Reality shows have come as a huge market for stars who have lost in the movie / serial market and want to re-invent themselves. So, effectively, we are watching a bunch of people decide who's the loser among the losers. Hey, am not judging - this is evident by what we see on TV.

4. Bollywood songs: Technically, I don't see this happening. Gone are the days when lyrics used to be the soul of the song. A song used to be loved because of the words / phrases used and the meaningfulness. Now-a-days, no meaning is fine. We only want some dhin-chak in a song so that it can be played in pubs and our i-pods for us to look cool. I feel bad for lyricists like Gulzar sa'ab and Javed Akhtar who were instrumental in revolutionizing the music industry with their content. We are now living in a "Kolaveri" age where the actual soup boys are the poets and lyricists.

5. Social Media screening: We should seriously consider screening the content we share on facebook and Twitter (and blogger). 

PS: While publishing, I had mentioned only 4 points. I have no idea who included the 5th one. Maybe this post was pre-screened and found objectionable. Blogger might have updated the post to make sure the government is happy. I tried deleting the 5th point, but when I publish it again, it appears out of nowhere.

Sarcasm totally intended. Take it with a pinch of salt.