Kuch diiil se
Clearly inspired by the success of Ekta Kapoor and her serials, the Adhikari brothers have started a talk show on their channel Sabe TV. Hey. whats this guy saying???? Ekta Kapoor and talk show???? Arre no baba, what I meant was that Sab TV is using Ekta’s famous heroine, Tulsi aka Smriti Malhotra now Smriti Z Iraani as a host (or is it hostess?). Moreover, they too have caught the numerology bug. Instead of naming the serial ’’Kuch dil se’’; its spelt ’’Kuch Diiil se’’, with the extraaaa i’s. Smriti too seems to have fallen for it, she spells her surname Iraani instead of Irani.
Anyways, despite all these trivial observations, what you get is an interesting, provocative and sensitive program on various societal issues.
The show is an hour long and is aired at 2.30 p.m. and a repeat at 11.00 p.m. from Monday to Thursday.
The start of the show is through a signature tune which is pleasant and catchy. After that you get to see a heavily pregnant Smriti giving her introductory remarks. Despite being in the final stage of pregnancy, the make up and lighting has been professionally made to highlight her best features and she looks quite good. The studio setting is a bit tacky, especially if you are used to seeing shows like Oprah Winfrey, but I suppose it will do in an Indian context.
The topics are quite varied such as man-woman relationships, extra marital affairs, discrimination against girls in the family, beauty issues, AIDS, drug addiction, child abuse, homosexuality, gays trapped in marriage, male strippers, etc. The look and feel of the show is reminiscent of earlier talk shows like Purush-kshetra hosted by Kiron Kher (or is it Kirron Kher now!!!, ok ok lets leave it at that) Each one hour episode is divided into four parts.
The first part of the show is a short introductory interview with a protagonist of the show, either a victim or a strong believer in a particular issue. The next quarter of the show, the host introduces a panel which includes ’’experts’’ in the field and they put across a more balanced outlook on the entire issue.
Most of these experts are usually social workers or psycho-analysts. In the third segment, the discussion is thrown open to the studio audience, which most of the time is quite dumb and often cannot relate to the topic on hand. Therefore, Smriti has to fill in the gaps and continue the discussion. Sometimes, the experts brought in are quite verbose and go on talking unnecessarily. In the final segment, the host takes up messages from outside callers, either on telephone or email or SMS and discusses their points. The best part is the manner in which she concludes each episode with the final sentence ending with ’’kuch dil se’’.
All in all, it is an interesting one hour, particularly if the topic being discussed is of any interest to you. Smriti tries to be as fair and neutral as possible and comes out beautifully in issues such as AIDS, drug addiction, child abuse etc. However, in some of the women related issues, she does tend to go a bit overboard and her strong feminist streak comes out clearly. She is at her worst when it comes to topics which are out of her sensibilities, such as homosexuality, married gays and male stripping. Here it appears she simply refuses to accept that people in a society may have value systems different from her own. Hence, it does look that she is a bit biased at times. With great effort however, she does try to bring some neutrality but it fails.
To conclude, do catch this program if the topic under discussion is something you feel strongly about. You will certainly have many new thoughts to chew on, kuch dil se!!!