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| (From left) Prashant Tamang from Darjeeling, Emon Chatterjee from Calcutta and Amit Paul from Shillong |
On his way back home to Darjeeling on Monday, Indian Idol contestant Prashant Tamang was followed by a cavalcade of about 100 vehicles. From NJP station, he had to stop every 500 metres.
The message is clear for tourists to Darjeeling and the world: the small screen and the small town are inseparable now.
The boys and the girls from Meerut and Gopalganj and Behrampore are everywhere — from every online community to the hallowed precincts of the IAS. But they are most visible on our television screens. The music talent show stars Amit Paul and Prashant Tamang, Debojit Saha and Vineet Singh do not hail from Delhi or Mumbai, or even Calcutta.
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Contests, particularly music shows, is where the talent from small towns is queuing up. Take Indian Idol. Into its third season, the popular music reality show on Sony Entertainment Television draws participants from all over the country, but it is the small town enthusiast who stands out. In Season 3, out of the final three contestants, two are from small towns. The second season winner Sandeep Acharya was from Bikaner while Indian Idol 1 finalist Amit Sana was born in Bhilai. Last year Antara Mitra made a long and eventful journey from Maslandapur, a West Bengal town in North 24-Parganas, to be placed fifth in the show. Debojit Saha was a struggling singer in his hometown Silchar, until he won the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contest two years ago. Kashmir boy Qazi Touqeer captured the imagination of the nation when he raked in a record 3.5 crore votes overall to win Fame Gurukul.
“Mass reach and avid viewership of television channels have made it possible for these shows to penetrate the smaller towns of the country,” says Albert Almeida, business head, Sony Entertainment Television.
Easy platform
The talent show on national television is one of the most accessible platforms for a small-town person to make it big. In the smaller towns, auditions for contests invariably meet with an overwhelming response, often bordering on mass frenzy. The queues in Kanpur commence at 5am; in Indore, Guwahati and Jodhpur the craze reaches fever pitch with parents, siblings and even neighbours accompanying an aspirant to the auditions. “Keeping in mind the fact that the small town is now where television action prevails, we extended the auditions of Indian Idol 3 to unexplored places such as Guwahati and Srinagar,” says Almeida. Gajendra Singh, the man behind talent shows such as Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and the current STAR Voice of India, agrees. “If there were 20 contestants from small towns when I started the show in 1992, there are 200 today,” says the television veteran. Most of the Voice of India contestants left in the fray are from small towns: Jabalpur, Ludhiana and Indore.
There is another advantage of television: it holds out a promise that appeals to the small town youth whose opportunities are limited compared to the big town dude. The message is, a talent show is won on merit. It doesn’t matter whether a contestant is from an obscure place or lacks connections. “The opportunities on TV are much more than films. As are the chances of instant fame and recognition. This is what attracts a person from small-town India,” says Naved Jaffrey, whose dance show Boogie Woogie has had participants from places like Kolhapur and Asansol.
Acting talent
The small screen is also home to several actors from small towns. If it was only making it in Bollywood that seduced until recently, today the small screen is luring many beautiful women and rugged men. Saakshi Tanwar, better known as Parvati bhabhi of Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii, from Alwar in Rajasthan, is a household name today. Achint Kaur was a homemaker in Meerut before she became a popular TV star. Small screen heartthrob Iqbal Khan was born in Srinagar and studied in Himachal Pradesh. “The TV industry welcomes every one with open arms. As long as you have potential, it doesn’t really matter where you come from,” says Iqbal. Much more so than in today’s Bollywood, where small-towners like Mallika Sherawat or Priyanka Chopra are few. The rest are star sons and daughters.
So small screen is the place to be. Ask Amit Paul of Shillong, the “dark horse” of the current Indian Idol, who has moved from strength to strength on the show. “I have been trying to make it to Indian Idol since the first season. In the third season, I missed the auditions in Calcutta. So I flew to Mumbai and auditioned from there, all in one day,” he smiles. Such is the compulsion. “The small town aspirants are most often much more focused and determined. They realise that opportunities like these are not easily available to them and they go all out to ensure that they make the most of it,” reasons Albert Almeida. “In the past, there have even been some contestants who hadn’t ventured outside their home towns before they were shortlisted for the show. The glitz and glamour of the small screen is something that they have dreamt about all their lives,”says Gajendra Singh.
Indian idols
And like Prashant Tamang, the successful contestants become demi gods in their hometowns, spurring more youth to follow in their footsteps. If Tamang’s fans a few months back had brought Darjeeling to a standstill, ransacking shops because they thought their SMS votes had not reached the TV channel, Debojit Saha had created widespread frenzy in the Northeast with his win and runner-up on the same Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contest Vineet Singh is a big name in hometown Lucknow, with even his parents getting invited to cut the ribbon at local functions! The Meghalaya government has nominated Amit as a brand ambassador for “peace, communal harmony and excellence” in the state. Saakshi Tanwar has hysterical fans surrounding her night and day when she goes back to Alwar. So does Rajeev Khandelwal, a.k.a. Sujal, who has a tough time venturing outdoors in his hometown Jaipur. “People from small towns take great pride in saying, ‘yeh mere gaon ka beta hai or isne mere sheher ka naam roshan kiya hai’,” says Gajendra Singh.
The final proof that small town has arrived: the serial has started to shift from the glitzy and brocaded interiors. Meri Awaaz Ko Mil Gayi Roshni and the recent Sangam on STAR Plus appeal to middle-class sensibilities and deal with a small town aspirant’s meteoric rise despite adversity. “Being set in a small town, the serial has a lot of freshness,” says Jennifer Winget, who plays small town girl Ganga in Sangam. Kasamh Se on Zee TV and Kaajjal on Sony, both of which deal with a small town girl making it big in the city, are already major TRP spinners.
Maybe this is another sign of globalisation. In drawing small town talent, Indian Idol is replicating its model, American Idol, in another way. When Carrie Underwood from Checotah, Oklahoma, arrived at the American Idol auditions two years ago at Los Angeles, she had taken her very first airplane trip. She won the contest. Last year, Kellie Pickler, who finished sixth, released an album called Small Town Girl.
We could do with such an album too.