Escape Artistes

AN EXODUS OF YOUNG INDIANS LEAVES HOME EVERY YEAR IN SEARCH OF THE BRIGHT LIGHTS OF REALITY SHOWS. BUT WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM AFTER YOU SWITCH OFF? GAURAV JAIN TRACKS THEIR STORIES

LUCKNOW AT 10pm in January feels like the end of the universe – dark, fog-bitten, still, with the odd rickshaw creaking past. A capacity crowd has packed into an auditorium to celebrate Mayawati’s birthday. The delicately double-chinned Dear Leader is not present herself, but that doesn’t slow the officials’ hectic praise or the folk dancers’ proclamations that she’ll ascend to be “Bharat’s PM”. Sitting demurely in a corner is a 28-year-old woman, dressed in a glamorous sequined white chikan kurta, whom all of Lucknow knows — Poonam Yadav is the one true celebrity roped in for the event, and the crowd is getting testy for her. Eventually, Poonam’s turn comes and, ascending the stage, she launches into a practiced concert of favourite Bollywood standards.

Poonam is just one among lakhs of young people streaming out of every corner of India — from cramped metropolitan chawls and forgotten northeastern hamlets, from grimy mining settlements and burgeoning B-towns, from despairing Srinagar and the deadends of Dhanbad. Drawing them like a psychotropic magnet is not Bollywood, but a newer merchant trading in the old dream: Reality TV. With its tantalising offer — as Sonam Kapoor’s character Bittu puts it so memorably in Dilli 6 — “to become somebody from nobody”. These young people no longer have to act or rely on the whimsy of directors and producers. The dream now trades on raw ability. To sing, to dance, to laugh. Stardom has been democratised and it seems all of India is lining up at the booth.

Since Kaun Banega Crorepati first sprang onto our consciousness, dozens of talent-based reality shows have mushroomed in India. Dance India Dance. Indian Idol. The Great Indian Laughter Challenge. India’s Got Talent. Each of these shows hold auditions in over 10 cities, descending like divine carrots from the sky, and thousands of young people throng to them. Each show then has addon competitions (for kids, for kids and mothers, for couples). And each show has clones. Mumbai is just the dizzy centre: every show has regional replicas going in Gujarati and Bengali and Marathi. Imagine the gargantuan spread, and you get a real measure of the energy field.

3 lakh is what an average TV show winner can earn for a live performance. Abhijeet Sawant is said to earn Rs 4.5 lakh per performance

There is huge money to be made out of this subculture one could call Talent TV. Money that is trading on that most profound resource: the human desire for recognition. The young see reality shows as a way of escaping their small horizons: the shows pick them for precisely that reason. This narrative arc — the desire for escape and the potential for escape — makes for great viewing. It is little wonder then that reality shows have become the biggest phenomenon in Indian television after the saas-bahu serials. They are cheaper to programme than full-scale soaps and hang their success on massive audience participation, which can run into crores of SMSes for the bigger shows. (Channels, in fact, often make more money from these shows from telephone company tie-ups than from advertising.) The market is so fecund, desperate producers running out of ideas have begun to throw up amalgamate contests, where winners from past shows compete against each other. Or more ludicrously, the young are asked to prove themselves as the most passionate fan of some superstar, or in the case of Star TV’s latest show, Mahayatra, as the most loving and dutiful child — a la Shravan Kumar, the epic character who carried his blind parents in a basket to pilgrimage points across India.

The ideas may be drying, but not the well of longing. To become somebody.

So what of these young people themselves, cannon fodder in TRP wars? What becomes of them when the arc lights go out? A select few, showing the same pluck that got them on air, stay on in Mumbai and turn their transitory fame into a revenue model — performing around the country in big venues and even abroad. Talent TV, in fact, has birthed a secondary market which never existed in India before, with B-level celebrities performing live at events of every hue, corporate, governmental and political, and at festivals and weddings. A much larger number though just have to walk the reverse arc back to anonymity, returning home to its dissatisfactions and now even narrower horizons. You may have forgotten their names but they have not forgotten their attempt to get out.

THE PRODIGAL Poonam Yadav, a Sa Re Ga Ma Pa finalist, performing at a Mayawati birthday concert (above). A maid’s daughter, she used to earn Rs 800 at jagrans. She now earns Rs 2 lakh a show and has built a mansion for her mother and herself (below)

PHOTOS: PANKAJ OHRI

Poonam Yadav is of a third kind. A finalist at the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007, she has come home to Lucknow for good but still powders herself with the memory of Mumbai stardust. This allows her a modicum of success on the live performance circuit and she has retained some characteristics of the celebrity. A dislike for punctuality, an ability to pretend other people are invisible, fussing at the room temperature. But for most parts, she is a wary young woman, sullen, and almost fed up with the drama of her own story. Poonam’s celebrity, in fact, has been both golden and notorious.

TALENT AGENCIES KNOW THAT THEIR PICK MUST HAVE A UNIQUE, SALEABLE LIFE STORY

Her life seemed scripted for Reality TV. Daughter of a maidservant, Poonam grew up in deep poverty in Lucknow’s Sadar Bazar area. Her father died while she was in the womb. But here, in the kaccha house that let the rain in every year, Poonam has now built a narrow but opulent mansion from her earnings. She earns Rs 2 lakh a show now; she earned Rs 800 before television happened to her. She has travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore for performances. An odd remnant from her earlier life sits before her mother: instead of an electric heater, a tasela burning coal and wood is on the floor. Poonam cares so little for attention at this stage that she has stayed in the comfort of dowdy at-home clothes and oiled hair when the photographer arrives. She can dress up for the stage, sure, turn on her star power. But the press can take their lumps.

Music was always her passion and she got herself intermittent music tutors, sustaining herself financially with various odd jobs at a PCO and nursing home. She’d also begun to perform at local jagrans. “I used to look at my harmonium and cry,” she says. “I think if I hadn’t got into Sa Re Ga Ma Pa when I did, I’d be in an asylum by now.” Reality TV as deliverance. The audition as messiah.

It is difficult to imagine the impact of Talent TV juggernauts hitting mofussil India. Lakhs audition for the bigger shows like Dance India Dance; thousands turn up for smaller ones like MTV Roadies. Often you can register for an audition with just an SMS. To cash in on these maniacal events, talent agencies like Two Tulips have spread octopus feelers deep into the crevices of most of India’s small towns. Their local coordinators keep tabs on talent emerging in schools, colleges, festivals, neighbourhood clubs. They know that only talent will not do: their pick must have a saleable life story.

Even though it’s held in the heart of Delhi, the press event for Star Plus’ Mahayatra show captures some of the bustle and razor-edge anticipation these events evoke. The mood quadruples as it radiates further out from the metros. It is a brisk winter morning at South Delhi’s Birla Mandir. PR executives welcome the cro - wds at the temple entrance. The contest is on: who will prove to be the ideal, modern- day Shravan Kumar? Who will prove their love for their parents by taking them to the four dhams of Hinduism? Inside, contestants just out of their teens declare in tutored tones why it’s important for them to embark on these sacred journeys. Only one girl who’s recently finished high school admits she’s here because she just wants to travel. The questionnaire asks things like “How’d you express your love for your parents?” and “What’s the most you’ve done for them?” The parents seem far more sincere than the kids, and seem happy to be spending some time with them. Afterwards, a yagn a is conducted. Then, with the unfazed logic of spectacle, the contestants race with one another on this freezing day — on slabs of ice.

1 crore is what you can win if you prove on the new show Mahayatra that you are the modern Shravan Kumar — the ideal son or daughter

Through one such audition, Poonam pole-vaulted herself out of anonymity into the arena. Once there, the introverted Poonam jostled her way through to fourth place. Post-show (with contestants still in dizzy freefall, coming to terms with the extreme emotions of elimination or victory), it’s common practice for channels to sign two-year contracts with contestants and organize live shows for them. (Sony reportedly takes 20 percent of the proceeds; Zee reportedly takes 50. Industry sources say that, on average, the winner of a Talent TV show can command anywhere from Rs 2.5 to 3 lakh per performance, while the second and third runners-up take between Rs 1 to 2 lakh each. The top 10 finalists of a hit season are assured at least Rs 1 lakh per performance while the top bracket of a flop season can still command around Rs 50,000. Someone like the first Indian Idol winner, Abhijeet Sawant, is now said to charge around Rs 4.5 lakh per live show.)

But to make this money, celebrityhood must first be manufactured. Poonam came home to Lucknow the first time to a grand welcome, organised by Zee. She landed at 1am to find 10,000 people waiting at the airport and her neighbourhood. A band was playing; security protected her from choreographed mobs. Her stardom was birthed by Caesarean.

When her mandatory stint in Mumbai was done, Poonam took up a job with the Railways as a booking clerk in Lucknow — something Laloo Prasad Yadav had publicly promised her while she was on the show. Then last year in March, she tried to kill herself. Newspapers reported rumours of her being pregnant and an aborted affair with music director Ismail Darbar — which both deny vehemently. “He and his wife were like parents to me. No one wants to publish what I have to say. Those rumours are all anyone wants to hear, but I’m ready to take medical tests,” says an angry Poonam. But scandal was not her only travail. She returned to find everyone she had grown up with was jealous of her success. “Even people who taught me music. People just want you to look backward for a second and trip.” Everyone in Lucknow now knows her and this more than anything else tires her.

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