There’s something about the whole Rakhi Sawant hullabaloo that has me all giggles. She’s damn cheap, that’s for sure. In her full senses, she will go on to blabber all bullshit on TV. Worse still, she manages to have “friends” help her out in the process. Be it a random Abhishek or an indispicable microorganism like Mika. This is what Indian Television and more specifically, news channels like Sahara and NDTV India have boiled down to.

I was watching her “interview” on Sahara and I felt that even the anchor was involved, if not a little bit, in the ‘tamasha’. Then, to make it all worthwhile, the channels that feature her force the anchors to ask for your “generous votes” (read SMSes – Short Messaging Service) in favour of her “worthy cause” so they can pay their bills (6 Rupees each I last heard and multiply that by a few lacs). That she’s had to do shameful things to make ends meet as a teenager. That she represents the middle classes in all their might. That she’s shattered by her personal failure to bag the first prize in some insignificant stunt show that I never even bothered to tune into. Sure the Rakhi Sawant episode is far from over, and judging from past record, the climax is yet to begin, that I can bet on.

With this kind of desperation, I sometimes regret having left watching damned Balaji Telefilms and Ekta Kapoor serials on Sony Entertainment Television, Star Plus and Zee TV.