Yes, you heard me right, I'm gone..vanished..disappeared..killed..murdered.
By who you ask?
By YOU...you unfaithful, promiscuous, wandering audience...who else? You change your TV preferences like a thing of fashion. You give in to fads as easily as a wannabe teenage...it is you who have pushed me over the edge.
I still remember the first time I opened my eyes. It was in 1984 that I was born as 'Hum Log', India's very first soap opera. Well, I may confess that I am an NRI and a Green Card holder because of my American origins. It was American Press in 1930s who gave my kind of programs this name. My first name 'Soap' comes from my advertising fathers who convinced some mad soap manufacturers to sponsor my earliest avatars in Americas. My maiden name comes from the art form 'Opera' that brings the irony of a mundane day in your life in the form of a highly dramatized story line. But as with any other thing of external origins, I too have been adopted in India with warmth and love and molded into its own cultural fabric like I have always belonged here!
I cherish the time when all of you used to run to the only television of your locality with clock work precision to watch me. I felt like a movies star running packed shows week after week. Thanks to you people, I lived for 154 episodes of Hum Log and left indelible memories in the history of Indian Television. But it was just the beginning of my journey, Hum Log started the Soap[y] affair of Indian TV viewers with me. In-fact I have also been cited as a major reason for the quick adoption of TV sets in the late 1980s and credited with introducing another revolution - the '2-minute noodle'. Yes it was I who first brought the Maggi noodles to your lives and kitchens.That was the first commercial I had run during that time. Now you see how long back we go together and what influence I have had in shaping up your culture!
Hum Log was just the beginning, Buniyad, Ramayana and Mahabharata followed and went on to break global viewership records. Rajni, Shanthi, Udaan, Tipu Sultaan etc kept you coming back to me for more. By 1990s I had become the pivot around which your daily lives revolved around. I became the savior of the otherwise boring life of a housewife and also an binding force that bought not just a family, but societies together at one time, at one place - the TV. Those were my glorious days.
Satellite TV brought a fresh breath of air and more choices for me as well as you audience. With Satellite TV came the most definitive phase of my life - the K- Phenomenon. Balaji telefilms with Ekta Kapoor re-packaged me with mega sets, glamorous faces, wicked vamps and what not. Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahoo thi, became the our answer to the Bold and the Beautiful. Many more Ks followed - Kkusum, Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki and many more hits after hits.
Just as I thought I was here to say YOU betrayed me. Some one came with an idea of Reality TV and YOU latched on to it as your long lost love. What started as a flavor of the week with Sa Re Ga Ma Pa as the Singing reality show has now snowballed into an addiction. Because of YOU, the boundaries between entertainment and voyeurism are being blurred. Cheap thrills are winning over genuinely good content. Some one else's pain, shame, fear or embarrassment has become your Prime Time entertainment. Your kids are making role models of teenagers making mockery of our social institutions, relationships and language on the national television in front of your own eyes!!
Well if that's what you want, then I have no place in your life now.
Adios my good old friend...my viewer on whose stories I have lived my life.
Adios...may we meet again...in this life or another.
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