Don't Bollywood fans deserve a live telecast of award ceremonies?

I don’t remember why I stopped watching the Filmfare awards. Maybe it was seeing repeated cutaways to the same actors clapping thirty times within the hour. Or maybe it’s because I don’t need to watch Bollywood stars dance and pretend to enjoy themselves at an awards show since they can be seen dancing and pretending to enjoy themselves on every popular show on every television channel every day. Or maybe it was the sight of a critics award for “Best Khan that drives a Hyundai i10 and is constantly stopped at American airports” (zomg, Shah Rukh Khan won it. Who’d have thunk) and the epiphany that just showing up at an event is sometimes the only requirement for being felicitated. Or perhaps I just couldn’t handle the irony of a show that claims to celebrate achievement being sponsored for the longest time by a company that produces cancerous products (Manikchand). [caption id=“attachment_1384083” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Courtesy: ibn live[/caption] Whatever the tipping point, it was a sad end to a relationship I had nurtured since childhood, ever since I spotted Mamta Kulkarni laid bare in the magazine. It’s not that I hated the awards ceremony. I’ve just become indifferent to their existence. Anyone who has been in a relationship will tell you that that’s the most horrible way to exit. However, thanks to family that I have now disowned, I was forced to watch the awards last week and they made me furious. Not because I was having to relive the above mentioned gripes, but because watching my family enjoy a show that is hollow at its core and pretending to be something it’s not felt like cheating. I know it sounds like a ridiculous complaint. What are films and the film industry but an illusion? Isn’t the whole point of editing and camera tricks to make us believe something that is incredible? What is the act of watching a film but a willing investment on the part of the viewer into accepting things that are not? Yet, watching my family enjoy a Salman Khan performance, believing he was dancing in front of a live audience, felt wrong. I broke it to them that in all likelihood it was shot a day before or after the event in an empty room with no one watching. Soon, they started spotting the same reaction shots constantly being regurgitated and from there, it became a game of Spot The Editors’ Work. By the end of it, they were somewhat crushed at finding out that the awards weren’t “real”. Ironically, so was I. I’m still torn thinking about whether I should have let the illusion be because it made them happier. The only thing that cheered my family up was the appearance of Voldemort’s horcrux, Rekha. Rekha presented Deepika with the Best Actor award with these words: “She’s the one woman I won’t mind losing my man to.” My uncle looked at me and said, “Yaar, she’s 65. What man at this age? She has some scandalous photos of the organizer or what that they allow her to present the award every year?” It’s strange how as laypersons, so many of us want to see the industry as one big happy family, while in reality, event managers run around award shows trying to manage celebrity egos and their associated fights. Bollywood fans will, apparently, blindly accept and watch any footage of the Filmfare awards as and when it gets released. What would be fantastic, however, is if we can pull off a ceremony in the near future that’s telecast live. That’s unlikely to ever happen, given commercial interests, finicky stars and channels wanting their own advertising pound of flesh, but imagine an awards show that goes out live to fans. Imagine the performances that our industry would have to deliver. Isn’t that something the fan should be allowed to expect?