Do you Dare 2 Watch Andy on Bigg Boss Saath 7?

By Aditi Mittal One of the most polarising figures in this year’s Bigg Boss house is VJ Andy. Instead of puckering up his lips and getting ready to kiss Salman Khan’s a**, the way every Bigg Boss contestant is inclined to, VJ Andy poked fun at him during the first episode itself. This is why next in my fan series about the contestants of Bigg Boss Saath 7 (see The Many Faces Of Armaan Kohli ) is a pontification upon VJ Andy. Much like every contestant in the house this season, Andy too has an illustrious past that has warranted his ambiguous accent, assaulting our ears for this whole season. First, he became a fashion designer without being a former starlet or getting married to a Bollywood A-lister. Second, is his piece de resistance: he anchored the Channel V show Dare 2 Date. [caption id=“attachment_1174917” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Now, Dare 2 Date (because “to” was 2 long a word) — or as it known to Indians everywhere — is a show that puts two people on a first date and squeezes the last drop of dignity out of it. It’s painful to watch. The tagline of the show speaks for itself: “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” Channel V inserts the optional suffering part in the form of VJ Andy, who shows up at regular intervals to make comments about the contestants and to display his disturbingly large collection of capris. The participants are picked up from Punjab, Delhi and other rich, fertile grounds in our country that have given the bountiful harvest of Roadies contestants for 10 seasons now. If one had to venture why India has the culture of arranged marriages, it would be Dare 2 Date. Watching it makes me want to go crying to my parents to do all the dating work for me. First, we meet the contestants — a woman, who usually says things like “Main ek princess ki tarah hoon”, without the knowledge that things almost never end well for princesses in real life. The men are usually sourced from the rejects pile of other reality shows by Channel V. Since they usually have no jobs, they describe themselves with monikers like “Jack off all trades” (which incidentally might be only way they will ever get/give a job). They will most likely ask questions like “What are your vital stats?” (not in reference to her heart rate) or “Are you sexually horny?” because they’ve apparently explored the entire gamut of “horniness”, and “sexually” is merely one of the myriad ways that one can be horny. This is followed by a date in which they do scintillating things like sit in restaurants that have no waiters and so they don’t even get a decent meal out of it. Other date situations have included playing carrom and even though I’ve barely played carrom, I’ve played enough of it to know that it is not sexy. The only way one would get impressed by someone flicking disks around is if they were throwing DVDs of Bodyguard and Ready into a trash can. Dare 2 Date is specifically tailored to ask the question “Can opposites attract?” (She’s a woman, he’s a man! She loves poetry, he’s illiterate! She’s thin, he’s Punjabi, OH MAN WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE GOING TO THINK OF NEXT?) A fight ensues, during which the participants turn into mini versions of Andy and become stupendously obnoxious to each other for the episode’s runtime. Needless to say, there was a higher success rate of the rumoured Aishwarya Rai-Salman Khan relationship than for the romances birthed so tenderly on Dare 2 Date. The show is more a “VJ Andy employment guarantee scheme” by Channel V than about the actual dates. Andy was brought into the Bigg Boss house to fill the “gay drama queen” quota, a mantle handed down from previous seasons by Bobby Darling, Rohit Verma, Imam Siddique and others. The one thing that Andy has done right so far, though, is that he’s not played up to those stereotypes the way his predecessors did. He’s irked everyone by not making it all about his sexuality and thus letting one of the first gay relationships flourish on prime time television. The footage of him getting cozy with Sangram was pathbreaking for that very reason. For this, I am a fan. In all seriousness, I’d like to see more of VJ Andy on television. Dare 2 Date has not exploited his full potential. Bigg Boss, we never know ki aap kya chahte hain, but keep Andy around Bigg Boss, kyoonki hum usse chahte hain. Aditi Mittal is a stand-up comedian, actress and teacher. She’s on twitter as @awryaditi and she blogs at http://doesmybloglookbiginthis.wordpress.com