TELE BUZZ

Tribute to the national heros
Whilst every channel is celebrating the golden year of Indian independence with serials depticting the freedom struggle, here’s one that genuinely salutes the heros of our country. Zara Yaad Karo Qurbani directed by Venugopal Thakkar is a tribute to the soldiers who have been bestowed the nation’s highest gallantry award, the Param Veer Chakra (PVC). A 90 second audio-video musical capsule Zara ... is produced by Provideo and is telecast every weekday on DD Metro and four southern DD Kendras. Sonu Nigam lends his voice to a song in their honour which is followed by a commentary of 30 seconds giving the details of the individual PVC winners. Hitherto, 17 soldiers have been awarded the PVC most of them posthumously.

Movers & Shakers becomes bi - weekly
Movers And Shakers, the desi version of the Jay Leno Show will now be aired twice a week. The show telecast on Sony has had some interesting guests on it like Ameen Sayani who revealed that he flirted with the models when he’d compered the Miss India Shows and Shweta Shetty who floored the host Shekhar Suman and fellow-guest Mahesh Bhatt when she said that they were the inspiration for her song Deewane, to deewane hain! The show which has Shekhar Suman at his funniest, wittiest best may probably prove to be the right tonic for your Monday blues, though it’s rather late in the day i.e at 10 pm!

An evening of melody
If you switch onto STAR Plus Saturday evenings at 10 pm, you’ll be pleased to hear the melodious strains of an instrument or a vocalist. We are talking about Sur Sandhya, the only programme on the air, that devotes an hour exclusively to classical music. Produced by Anuradha Chaurasia, the programme features maestros and upcoming talent, tracing the artiste’s background alongwith relevant clippings making it extremely viewer-friendly. The idea, as Chaurasia puts it, is “to make it understandable to the layman.” Effort has also been made to explain the ragas in simple terms. Some of the prominent personalities already featured in the programme are maestros Pt. Jasraj and Shivkumar Sharma, up and coming artistes like Aarti Anklekar, Roopak Kulkarni and Rakesh in a jugalbandi. Chaurasia who had earlier done Sadhana for DD says that STAR Plus and R Basu are promoting classical music in a big way. Her only grouse is the inconsistent quality of transmission which mars the programme. After Sur Sandhya Chaurasia has lined up another programme on the guru-shishya parampara which will have a maestro and the student making music together. Then there's one with film music directors in the pipeline.

Artistes complain of non - payments
Looks like the software companies are facing an acute financial crunch. How else would you explain the non-payment of dues to artistes for as long as 11 months? Ironically, the very same companies are launching mega-serials and programmes in quick succession. For instance, Plus Channel which has half-a-dozen programmes on air has apparently not paid the artistes working in various programmes for almost a year. And the few who have been issued cheques deposited them only to have them bounce. Even Mukesh Khanna who claims that Shaktimaan is the best fantasy serial to happen on the tube, hasn’t paid his artistes for three months now. The small-time artistes who work on a daily wage basis are at the end of their teether. Surely, this doesn’t augur well for established companies who have their reputation at stake.

A woman’s fight for justice
If the Hindi dailies like Shanti and Aurat have woman as the protagonist on a vendetta spree Bangalore DD has its own Chiguru, a serial that depicts Nirmala’s fight for survival in world of men. Nirmala is a lawyer. Because of marital discord she stays separately with her two children and refuses to accept even her mother’s help. Her chauvinist bhaiyya can’t tolerate Nirmala’s independence. But to his dismay, he finds his own son walking out of his home to stay with aunt Nirmala. Meanwhile Nirmala takes up the case of Sethumadhav much against the wishes of her senior lawyer Paramasivayya. A local goonda Puttayya wants to construct a medical hospital on the land owned by Sethumadhave. But when Nirmala files a case he threatens her and vile rumours about her and Sethumadhav’s relationship are spread. How Nirmala triumphs over these hurdles is what Chiguru is all about. Made under the banner of Laxksmi Creations, four episodes of the 13-episode serial have already been aired. Directed by B Suresh, the serial has Thara, Bank Janardhan, Manjula, B M Venkatesh, Master Santosh and Baby Keerthana in the cast.