If you have said yes to any of the above, congratulations! Not only can you now claim to be a true-blue reality junkie, you can also push those residual guilt pangs aside with the knowledge that you are in the company of millions across India who just can’t wait to tune into the same shows every night. The more abusive the show, the more people seem to be hooked.

(Don’t) Mind your language

Reality shows in India haven’t shied away from dirty talk for some time now. The trend arguably started in 2003 with Roadies, the reality adventure show on MTV where a group of teenagers didn’t think twice about trading insults on national television. As viewers brought up on the sanitised Indian Idol and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa gaped on, the F-word — and much worse — quickly became part of the country’s television lexicon.

“Indian reality TV actually grew up with Roadies. Here were real people with real emotions showing and saying things as they were,” says Rannvijay Singha, Roadies host and season one winner.

Carefully planned verbal duels now pepper an evening’s voyeuristic viewing. Every curse word uttered on a reality show today is almost a sure-shot guarantee to TRP success. “The average Indian middle-class family has changed. Today, most parents hardly bat an eyelid when it comes to watching shows like Bigg Boss and Emotional Atyachaar together with their children,” feels adman Prahlad Kakkar. “Whether it is Veena Malik and Ashmit Patel canoodling under a quilt in Bigg Boss or a couple washing their dirty linen in public in Emotional Atyachaar, a 50-year-old man wants to watch it as much as his 20-year-old daughter does.”

Whichever channel your remote control stops at, you are likely to find a show more or less along the same verbally-uncensored lines. The recently concluded Rakhi Ka Insaaf on Imagine had the no-holds-barred actress doling out “justice” to aggrieved (read: abusive) parties. In one episode, security personnel had to intervene when an estranged couple came to blows! On UTV Bindass’s Emotional Atyachaar — a televised fidelity test — the beep works overtime as warring couples hurl the choicest of insults, escalating more often than not into outright physical aggression. Big Switch on the same channel — a reality format in which contestants switch families — has tweens and teens abusing their parents. The country laps it up.

“What may be abuse for you may be entertainment for a certain section of viewers. There is definitely a ready audience watching and liking these shows. Since they are new and forbidden, people are tuning in even more to know what they are all about,” says Bharathi S. Pradhan, The Telegraph columnist and editor of The Film Street Journal.

How else do you explain the fact that Rakhi Sawant guarantees sky-high ratings, and Dolly Bindra’s exit from Colors reality show Bigg Boss (which ended two weeks ago) has the audience voting in millions to get her back into the house? This, after the screen vamp’s non-stop tirades had caused the information and broadcasting ministry to suggest a shift from family-friendly 9pm to the post-11pm “adult” slot for Bigg Boss.

“That’s the way I am in real life. If people mess with me, then I will give it back. If that means abusing them, I will, even if it is on national television,” a nonchalant Dolly had told t2 after being thrown out of the show. Now Dolly has achieved icon status, with more than a dozen dedicated Facebook fan clubs — one of which wants her as Prime Minister!

“Most of us may not admit it, but a screaming Dolly Bindra will stick in the mind much more than a nondescript Aanchal Kumar who merged with the wallpaper in Bigg Boss,” says television funnyman Kunal Vijaykar.

A for Abuse

With the audience giving two thumbs up to libellous language, reality TV makers are making it a point to design shows that accommodate it. “Most shows on Hindi general entertainment channels primarily cater to SEC (socio-economic class) B and C, which is the frontbencher kind of audience, most of whom like profanity. These channels therefore try and fit in elements that cater to this kind of an audience,” feels Rohit Bhandari, senior vice-president, AXN.

The result is often deliberately created situations that enable contestants to be profane. It starts right from the contestant selection stage: producers look out specifically for someone who will not shy away from a beep or two (case in point, Dolly Bindra). “For shows like Big Switch and Emotional Atyachaar, it is imperative for us to have certain scenes that contain abuse simply because it is relevant and integral to the format of the show,” admits Nikhil Gandhi, business head, UTV Bindass.

Reality TV producers also blame the contestants themselves. “Swearing is a natural part of almost every young person’s life. If we ask our Roadies and Splitsvilla contestants to stop abusing, then the shows will start appearing scripted,” believes Sandeep Dahiya, vice-president, communications, MTV.

“The generation of today uses these words in their daily lives. So it’s natural that it will at some point or the other make it into our reality shows. The Indian youth uses f*** day in and day out in interactions with friends. We don’t raise our eyebrows then, so why magnify it unnecessarily when it’s shown on TV?” asks VJ Nikhil Chinappa.

“The Indian youth today is far more aggressive and that aggression manifests itself in the form of language and gesture,” agrees Gandhi of Bindass. “What happens on most of these reality shows is that the contestants themselves push the boundaries. It’s actually a catch-22 situation for the channel because if we rein them in, then the basic essence of reality television is lost; if we don’t, then we are accused of going overboard.” And it could be much worse, he adds. “Since we don’t really have retakes on most of our reality shows, we shoot whatever happens and beep out or edit out portions depending on the content. As it is, what the audience finally sees on these shows is a vastly filtered reality.”

Beep and blur

Every channel is apparently handed a list of “unsuitable-for-television-terms” by the information & broadcasting ministry. The banned words? Too profane to be printed here.

Yet some critics feel that the beep does little more than call added attention to inappropriate content, effectively revealing more then it hides. “Aggressive use of foul language also brings about certain changes in body language and that is something that the beep cannot mask. The beep also excites the audience into guessing what has been said,” feels Bharathi Pradhan.

In some cases, the beep is accompanied by a digital blurring of the speaker’s mouth. “As a responsible broadcaster, we make sure that we use the beep in a way that it is next to impossible to gauge what is being said,” says Nikhil Madhok, marketing head, Imagine.

Love it or hate it, it is time to get used to abusive reality shows — beeps and all. “I feel that there should be a surfeit of these shows on Indian television. Let us watch them, get sick of them and then block them out of our system,” recommends Pradhan.

Till then, gape on. Or gag on.

Abuse and titillation define many indian reality shows.

Bigg Boss

The show that made Indian TV grow up. Courtesy contestants abusing with abandon and couples canoodling in corners. The just-concluded Season 4 of the Colors reality show had all this — and much more. Dolly Bindra’s abusive ways kept a few family audiences away, while Ashmit Patel and Veena’s touchy-feely overtures in the full glare of 56 cameras made even some reality TV addicts cringe. Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson’s three-day sojourn in cleavage-popping sari and sarong sent temperatures soaring. The result: Sky-high TRPs for Bigg Boss and celeb status for Dolly Bindra.

Emotional Atyachaar

A fidelity test on camera, Emotional Atyachaar on UTV Bindass is as abusive as it gets. Anchor Pravesh Rana often has to intervene when a verbal duel between a warring couple ends in a fist fight. As relationships go sour and people wash their dirty linen in public, cameras are trained on the below-the-belt action 24x7.

Big Switch

Every weekend, do rants rent the air in your living room as “replacement” parents and “replacement” kids engage in a free-for-all? The show? Big Switch on UTV Bindass, a reality format in which one can switch families and go beep, beep, beep. In its second season, arguments often get out of hand, resulting in physical pow-wow (see picture above). But with audiences lapping it up, who dare complain?

Dadagiri

No, this isn’t the Sourav Ganguly quiz show we are talking about (which, we quite like). In its fourth season, the UTV Bindass reality format takes abuse and humiliation to a completely different level. Remember the episode in which a male contestant slapped the female host? Or the one in which a participant was made to wear a dog collar and stick his mouth into mud and slush (picture left)? Grrrrrrr.

Rakhi Ka Insaaf

With item girl Rakhi Sawant leading the way, how can controversy not follow? Things often got ugly on the Imagine show in which Rakhi mediated between warring parties. Expletives flew about and coming to blows was a given. Rakhi pitched in, hurling abuse at anyone within hearing distance — she once called a man “impotent” on the show. The studio audience loved it. So did many at home. Even after being banished to the late night slot because of “inappropriate content”, Rakhi Ka Insaaf found many takers. Bottomline? Busty bad behaviour is good.

Roadies

You have to watch the auditions every season to know how brutal it can get. Terror twins Raghu Ram and Rajeev Lakshman pull out all the stops to “toughen” (read: humiliate) an aspiring Roadie. The main show thrives on gossip and abuse, with each contestant playing “mind games” to beat the competition. The beep works overtime on this show. Often, the contestants get physically violent. Who can forget Palak raining kicks and blows on Poulomi in Season 6? Ouch! Or Ooooo!

They call it “humiliation tv”. when it comes to abuse and titillation, international reality TV is the “big brother” of our reality shows

Big Brother

The popular UK format in which a group of people are locked up in a house, isolated from the rest of the world but continuously watched by more than 50 cameras, has invited controversy and criticism from day one. Racism and abuse, sexual assault and physical violence have dictated the Big Brother adaptations across the globe. The one we know best? The 2007 Celebrity Big Brother edition in which Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty was racially targeted by British reality star Jade Goody (in picture above on the sets of Bigg Boss 2). Shilpa stayed on and stole the crown.

Jersey Shore

A MTV reality series that follows a group of young contestants spending the summer together on a Miami beach, Jersey Shore scores high on abuse and titillation. Besides frequent use of expletives and sexual insinuations, the popular show has often been pulled up for racial slurs, for promoting stereotypes and for an episode where a female contestant was punched in the nose!

The apprentice

The US version hosted by real estate magnate Donald Trump (in picture left) brings together more than a dozen hopefuls who compete in an elimination-style format for a one-year $250,000 starting contract to run one of Trump’s many companies. Criticised for implying that being “nasty, disloyal, greedy and selfish” are integral to success and described as being “full of vulgar, loud people who, for all the wrong reasons, are dobbing each other in”, The Apprentice is one of the rudest shows on television. What makes it worse? Trump’s piercing eyes boring into a candidate as he bellows, “You are fired!”

Hell’s kitchen

The American cooking competition is high on drama. The man primarily responsible for this? Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay who hosts the show. Often considered one of the most rude and obnoxious TV show hosts, Ramsay is a terror in Hell’s Kitchen. Sample: “Right now, I’d rather eat poodle shit than put that in my mouth” to “That tastes like gnat’s piss”. And the one comment that raised the bra, er bar? Ramsay telling a well-endowed contestant: “Would you mind taking your breasts off my hot plate?”

 

American Idol

The scowling Simon Cowell, a judge on the popular talent reality show for nine seasons, is notorious for his harsh words and hard shell. Acerbic to the point of making contestants cry, Simon minces no words and tells it like he feels it. From “You look like a man dressed like a woman” to a female contestant to “You sound like a cat in a vacuum cleaner” to a teenage Idol hopeful, Cowell is possibly the most hated man (and therefore one of the most watched) on reality television. Not a part of season 10 that went on air last weekend, Cowell is being missed by many. The one who has taken his place? Hottie Jennifer Lopez who cries when she has to eliminate a contestant! Aaaarrrrgh.