Here's a long agony-ridden SMS

Have a voice and want to sing? Want to dance with two left feet? Aspire to be a leader? There is an easy road to the hall of fame (and fortune, for the unnamed beneficiaries in the fray). All you need is a healthy bank balance or a wealthy family/ friends who can SMS-power your way to glory. There is a mini-revolution happening out there in which, it seems, everyone has a stake.. you either participate or you SMS. It's another matter that each SMS can set you back by Rs 5 to Rs 7, depending on the deal the producers have worked out with the telecom companies. Every channel and her aunt is prospering on the newly discovered virtues of the Short Message Service. If you think there are only three talent shows showcasing the nation's vocal virtuosity, you are obviously not keeping count. Forget Zee TV's `Sa Re Ga Ma Pa', Sony's `Indian Idol', or Star's `Voice of India', there is the `Bathroom Singer' and at least a dozen more on the regional channels on the SMS spree. Flick up and down the remote and each time, as if by magic, the screen morphs into a new singer, a new set and a new show, channel after channel, language after language. Just when you thought you simply have to wait out these contests to get some meaning back into TV, there comes one more: `Nach Baliye-3'. Aha! This one expects you to cast your SMS vote right from the start. No elementary elimination by the judges. You simply vote and vote after every single episode for your favourite celeb. Celeb? You mean Rakhi Sawant, Kashmera Shah, and someone called Vikas Something. So what if you have never heard of them, or heard of them in wrong contexts? They have partners and will dance. On the time-tested principle of no-one-can-have-his-cake-alone-on-TV comes `Jhalak Dikhla Ja'. Another SMS war that scales up and up in concentric circles to dizzying heights as the competition screams its way to a crescendo. Surf at your peril, there is simply no escape from them. Everyone has risen to the SMS challenge, so to speak and mastered the art of appeal. ``Please, please mujhe vote kijiye,'' they go, moving many a hard-hearted viewer towards his cell. I should know; I have fallen for the bait. Once. Television has utterly and abjectly surrendered to this loathsome technological innovation. Several lakhs of notes... oops... votes change hands and before you know it, some -- not necessarily a contestant -- have become millionaires. The SMS is like a rocket that jet-propels its payload of participants (and several others) into a new orbit. Inevitably, the new orbit enables further movement only through SMS-derived oxygen. Television being the prodigal kin of the print media, I used to arch a brow and scoff at the mindlessness of it all. Dumbed down it may be, perhaps heavily so, but print would never fall prey to such low brow gimmckry. Nah! The print, alas, proved to be dumber -- or, the lure of the lucre proved to be stronger, depending on which side of the fence you're on. A top-of-the-line newspaper is today scrambling for those SMS votes for a `deserving' leader. Yeah, leader, as in `leader of the country'. Go ahead, cast your vote freely. Election Commission, move over, the telecom companies are here. We will no longer need to go to the dreary polling booth to cast our votes; we may simply thumb our choice in. It's another matter that in the new version, a single vote won't do. You need to keep voting furiously till your favoured contestant reaches her destination. It's a small matter if you get bankrupt in the process and gray in the hair. What about the poor, did you say? Huh, where are they? Are there any BPL (below poverty line) wallahs without a cellphone? If there are, nobody's heard of them, darling. What are you if you can't afford to SMS? It's nice for the aam janta to be playing God. Only, one small voice keep buzzing at the back of my head: why us, pray? Are we all equally equipped to judge voice quality, sur, rhythm, dancing or the so-called `X' factor? Yeh public hain, yeh sab nahi jaanti. I am also a bit confused about the point sought to be made: if you really meant to empower us, why allow us to cast any number of votes? Surely, my opinion is as important as everybody else's and vice versa. Why, then, should my 1,000 votes eclipse your single vote? This discrimination makes nonsense of our democratic fundamentals, but also devalues the product in the bargain, with money muscling in to crown the winner. Last year, a couple participating in Nach Baliye, Shweta Kawatra and Manav Gohil, were said to be buying mobile phones for their relatives to vote them into the next round. Of course, they dutifully refused committing such blasphemy but, is anyone surprised? A certain Ms Lata Mangeshkar had gently snubbed these arbitrary talent contests and suggested that real talent is in singing new compositions. But her voice is drowned in the clutter of currency raining down every minute. The SMS has the hypnotic sway of the Pied Piper. Have money? please sms. I am hugely sceptical whether SMSes are really counted by anyone except the telecom companies. I remember `Indian Idol', which started this mayhem two years ago with its first instalment, categorically refused to share any data on the number of votes polled by each participant, citing exclusivity and contract conditions. A lot of us back then were curious about this novel format and wanted to know how many were taken in by this pattern of selection. So, we asked them about the votes polled by the two finalists on that contest but were turned away. VoI shares the margin by which one loses or wins but I'm not sure if they will open up their ledgers for public scrutiny. It's strange how all winners are male, how the north-eastern states seems to be the flavour of the season (remember the threats held out in case Debojit Saha didn't win `Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' contest last year-- he did), and most importantly, how the judges' favourites' always get top billing. Toshi, a participant who lost out early on VoI, was brought back through a veto vote by a select panel of judges. The next thing we know is that he is not only back, he has scored the maximum number of votes in the next round. Sure, there were local protests over his exit; but I dont know if all of India saw this as an emergency and sat up to vote him back with a vengeance. I suspect a lot of drama on the screen is the handiwork of TRP-starved producers. Should we be losing money so that our favourite participants makes it big and rich? As it is, they are a wee bit over-priced. Most of the Indian Idol contestants left me, with my unabashedly pedestrian tastes, cold. There should be more to reality TV than a phone line that is open certain days every week. If an alien were to land in India, and land plumb in front of a TV studio, he is likely to be launched into an over-heated SMS market: ``Is he an alien or not? SMS your answer to alpha beta gamma delta. Sorry, we have run out of English numerals and will henceforth be using the Greek alphabet for all SMS communication. Rest assured, we are in the process of booking the Chinese alphabet for future use so that neither you nor we run out of work. Keep watching.''

P.S. If you have any comments to offer, pl SMS. Send as many as you like, in keeping with the spirit of things.