Rajeev Lakshman and Raghu Ram in Calcutta on Friday. Picture by Aranya Sen

Roadies creators Raghu Ram and Rajeev Lakshman — the terror twins of television — were in town on Friday for a special preview of the Calcutta auditions of Season 8 of the MTV reality show. t2 caught up with the men who love to shoot from the lip...

Is there anything about the Roadies auditions this year — across six cities — that made it different from the previous seven seasons?

Raghu: No two seasons of Roadies are the same… no two auditions are the same. The biggest change this season has, of course, been having Rannvijay (the winner of Season I and Roadies host for seven seasons) sitting with us on the judging panel. His whole approach to the auditions, his point of view, are very different from that of the two of us and that is bound to bring some kind of novelty and freshness to the show.

In fact in one episode, the Chandigarh auditions, we roughed up a guy and Rannvijay did not like that. After that we had a heated discussion and we put that on air. If Rannvijay had not been with us in that room, we would still have beaten up the guy, but that point of view would not have been expressed and we would not have had an opportunity to justify why we hit him. So that’s something that is very different about this season.

Do you think Rannvijay is an apt choice as a third judge because being a former Roadie, he is bound to be consciously or subconsciously sympathetic towards the contestants?

Raghu: But since he has been there, done that, his expectations from the contestants are higher. This guy is the best guy to be on the panel because he understands the show from every angle — as a contestant, as a presenter, as a judge. Also, whether he is sympathetic or empathetic towards the contestants is of no consequence because a lot of people we cast, we don’t even like. And some of the people we like, we don’t cast. For instance, in the Bangalore auditions, there was this girl called Sushma whom we really liked… we liked her too much to cast her in the show.

Each one of us has our own sympathies or the lack of it. But that’s not something that should affect our job and Rannvijay, being a part of Roadies for so long, understands that completely. There is no question of sympathy clouding judgement in any way.

But is aggression an essential element of Roadies?

Raghu: If we hit a guy on the show or shout at him, it’s not because we are getting affected by what he is saying. We feel that if a contestant is saying or doing something wrong, he needs to be corrected and reprimanded because what he is saying is reaching out to millions of young people.

Rajeev: A Roadies judge doesn’t necessarily have to be comfortable with aggression. Raghu and I are aggressive on the show because that’s how we are. Rannvijay isn’t an aggressive person by nature and that’s how you see him on the show. But Raghu and I have never got aggressive with any girl on the show. We have actually been sweet to many contestants.

Raghu: You also have to understand that this is a television show. We shoot for 20 hours for a 45-minute episode. When the editing happens, it is but natural that the high points of those 20 hours will be retained. They will take the most interesting, the most dramatic, the most reactive bits and put it out there. But I don’t know why we are always painted as these aggressive guys.

Everyone thinks that we have had a horrible childhood, that our parents never hugged us, that we are mental cases bordering on the schizophrenic. If you watch any episode, you will know why we are often so aggressive.

At the Calcutta auditions, there was this boy from Tikiapara who told us that he would kill his sister if she married outside the community. How can we tolerate things like this, especially when millions of youth are watching us?

I care a rat’s ass what I am thought of as. When you say that I am the rudest man on television, why don’t you also try and explore why I am being rude and aggressive? It’s a casting process for a reality show, we are not here to show or promote aggression.

Rajeev: We don’t tolerate sexism, we don’t tolerate racial slurs on the show. Any kind of bullying and discrimination really gets our goat. If we then hit someone, it’s completely justified.

Has the one-season break changed your approach towards Roadies?

Raghu: Our approach to Roadies changes every year. The one year that we took off has brought about one definite change — I personally feel I have “peaced” out a little bit. Earlier I would start screaming easily at a contestant. Now if they irritate me, I just politely tell them to f*** off.

What has the quality of contestants this season been like?

Raghu: Every year yields its own set of people because every year the situations change. This time the show’s theme is ‘Shortcut To Hell’ based on the philosophy that young people need their kind of success now. For a lot of people of this generation, the end justifies the means. This year’s Roadies are a very interesting bunch. The way they will interact on the show will have an impact — at the minimum, it will entertain you, at maximum, it will provoke thought.

How has Roadies as a brand evolved over the last eight years?

Raghu: Roadies is aspirational, Roadies is iconic… and we have worked hard to bring it to that level, consciously or otherwise. But we really don’t bother about this whole brand thing because if we do we will lose focus of the core, which is to create content for the show. What makes Roadies a brand is that people know that this is a show where you can expect the unexpected.

Roadies is a very interesting study of Indian youth behaviour. Some hate Roadies, some live for Roadies. It’s much more than a show to them. Some people hate us and the abuse on the show saying: ‘God knows what these two bald guys think of themselves?’ Some people watch Roadies only for the abuse.

Any roadmap for Roadies in the next few years?

Raghu: Considering that it is the only popular Indian reality format, we have the liberty to change it. Every other reality show is an adaptation of an international format and they have to stick to whatever is written in the rulebook. Every year, Roadies changes in terms of the format, in terms of the twists and turns…. But we don’t focus on the next year, we just focus on the current season. My crew often tell me: ‘Arre agle saal ke liye kuchh bacha ke rakho’, but for me it is always here and now. We come from the school of thought that give every season your everything.

Moving away from Roadies, why didn’t Tees Maar Khan, your first film together, work?

Rajeev: It made a lot of money, so it did work. But yes, it got whipped by the critics. We think it was a brilliant film, though.

Raghu: Farah Khan is a genius who knows how to entertain the audience. Tees Maar Khan was meant to entertain and that’s what it did. Period. I watched the film with a group of 10 boys in a single screen in a Karnataka village and the audience went berserk. That’s the kind of reaction that matters to us, not what a bunch of stiff upper-lipped critics say. But to be honest, I did not think that Rajeev and I did a good job. We could have done much better. But there isn’t much acting one can do when you are playing characters joined at the hip who have to mouth lines in unison.

Any more films for the two of you, together or individually?

Raghu: As of now, no. We can only do one thing at a time. Now it’s just Roadies. Truth be told, there are not too many offers. That’s also because we are consciously not accessible as we don’t like too many people around us.

Rajeev: We will also not act together anymore because we feel it’s too gimmicky. The first time we did it because it was novel, now it’s not different anymore. In fact, we are probably not going to act in films anymore. Do you know why? We have just been offered a film where we play rapists and we die and come back as ghosts in white bedsheets! Do you think we need to say anything more?