The New Oxford American Dictionary defines the word Grind as “reducing something to small particles or powder by crushing it”.
Now, if you were producing a serial whose sole aim was to pulverize its viewers balls to a fu**ing rubble, what would you call it? Bingo!
I really respected MTV till some time back. I did. It used to be one of the few channels that was happy doing its own thing. It was a trendsetter rather than a sheepish follower. It didn’t serve me with stupid soaps full of relationshit. It didn’t have over-the-top,in-your-face presenters who seemed to come out of the TV any second and snatch the food off my palte.
The year 2008 will always be remembered as a black year in MTV India’s history. That was the year when Splitsvilla went on air. The idea was simple: Bring a bunch of whores, a couple of good-looking pimps, dump them on a lavish resort and then let them bring the (whore)house down!
Splitsvilla achieved instant milestones. It gave the girls a new platform to showcase their bitching, cat-fighting and stripping skills. Good looking boys were back in demand. And how! 20 chicks ‘Splitting’ hairs over 2 chumps! It can also claim to be the pioneer of the modern era of scripted reality shows, along with Roadies.
It took me months to accept the fact that the man behind Splitsvilla was the same guy who had given us Roadies. Of course later it all made sense as each succeeding season of Roadies started raising the shit factor a billion times. Actually, Raghu had been trying to achieve this all the while, but the fact that he failed at the prostitutalization of MTV in his first few attempts came as a blessing in disguise for most of us.
Splitsvilla was a runaway success, thanks to the people who got thrills out of a shameless display of humanitarian vices. The roaring TRP’s prompted MTV and Raghu Ram- The Daddy Pimp, to unleash a slew of serials with egregiously whorish concepts.
Take Style Check for instance. A size zero chick blabbers about everything from what colour of undies girls should wear to how much megatons of makeup they need to apply before they can start looking remotely human. Dear Anusha, what good is a designer top, when you don’t have the boobs to fill it up with? You need to eat well and get laid more often. Maybe that will help you get out of your insecurities.
And when they faced a crunch of ideas, what did they come up with? Crunch, obviously.(It all makes sense in hindsight!) Now, if I wanted to see how people manage to live in extremely cramped spaces and still maintain their sanity, I would rather visit Dharavi.
At one point, the MTV unit felt it was still unable to match the levels of sluttiness that the regular family channels were churning out on a daily basis. So they roped in a bunch of real life addicts,homosexuals,transgenders,sex workers and wannabes of above categories to provide hands on training to the MTV staff. They simultaneously recorded their teachings and sold them off as True Life.
And then came Grind. The trailers themselves were enough to put off a man from masturbating again in life. Rapid ‘zoom in-zoom outs’ of Skimpily clad chicks dancing to the worst remixes of the lamest party songs, with a few hunks thrown in for the homosexual audience.The fact that men’s ‘Little Johnnies’ refused to acknowledge the chicks should give MTV an idea of what’s hot and what’s not.
The only music played on Music Television is Bollywood music, which ironically is not music at all. The nail in the coffin is the Ticker- supposed to be extremely funny, but in fact is the lamest ‘lame thing’ on MTV ever.
To add insult to injury, even for watching these kind of mindless serials, one has to first endure an endless array of commercials. I think the revenue generated by MTV from these commercials would be enough to feed a poor African country.
These days, I would rather watch my dog catch its tail than tune in to MTV India-which has become another grim example of how creativity is being pimped off for easy bucks.
The Pyjama Warrior 