You guys are going to call me absolutely `middle-class' (I love Ratna Pathak Shah for the way she says it in `Sarabhai vs Sarabhai') for this. But I genuinely believe DD National is the best Indian channel we have. IT has some singing shows, but the bulk of its programming is super stuff--series of cartoonists, how they work, series on rural issues, programme on health issues, educational material for children, lessons on morality and sensitive films.
Each time I click past DD National to Star, Zee, Sony, Sahara and what-have-you, I find someone or the other saying, Oh this contest means the world to me, I want to fulfil my mother's dream or I want to give my dog the best car in the world, and some sundry judges (often, has-beens such as Chunky Pandey, Raveena Tandon or Sonali Bendre and the nightmarishly omnipresent Malaika Arora-Khan).
Someone is praising a contestant or someone is fighting and someone else is crying copiously. Are these guys for real? Can't we have some real reality, people?