ROADIES

I had heard a lot about mtv roadies. The thing I used to hear the most was about who was voted out and the conspiracies that were hatched behind the back of others to vote the person out. It had become a ritual among my friends to discuss about it. Not having seen any episode or promo, I didn't know exactly what was it all about. My curiosity grew to no bounds and one day I decided that I had to see what all the stuff was. So as usual I sat down and got the episodes from the ever-reliable dc++ (this is the best thing that computer science has given the world and you guys should really believe me because I am a studying CSE at IIT Madras)

So on Sunday, I started watching the auditions that were held to select the roadies. The forms are filled, there are GDs (group discussion for the uninitiated) and based on the performance in these two, about 10-15 candidates are selected for PI (personal interviews). These auditions are held at 5-6 major cities across India (Bombay, Delhi, Chandigarh, Calcutta, Jaipur, ...). And the PIs are awesome. I tell you, the guys Raghu Ram and Nikhil Chinnappa are gods. They are masterminds and though they may not have a degree in psychology, they are the best psychologists I have seen. They can read and discover so much about you, just from a few sentences that you write on the form, that even you may not have known about yourself. And the way they conduct the interviews, man just great. Raghu acts as a terror and Nikhil as the calming factor most of the times, rarely do they switch places. They can tell you whether you are confident or under-confident or over-confident. They can show it to you and prove it to you. And I find that great. In just 5 minutes, you find your world turning on its head. All your theories about yourself go haywire and if you are clever enough you can learn a lot about yourself from them. I should say that when their work in the glam world is over, they should switch over to being psychiatrist, if not for themselves, atleast for the rest of the world. Hats off to both of you. I was speechless after seeing your interview sessions. Okay there were some which I didn't like at all, but majority of them - just amazing. Sometimes I feel its damn dangerous to sit in front of them for the fear that they may learn so much about the person and his thoughts that he will never be able to do anything after it.

To talk about the PI... They basically look for people who are truthful, strong, passionate, never-say die attitude... all the basic qualities of a roadie. They look for passion in the contestant's eyes and body language. They try to bring you out of your comfort spot and blast a series of question you would not like to answer ever. One of the simple questions is - what do you want to do in your life? What do you want to become in life? And nearly every damn guy answers - I want to become a very big person. The next question comes - and how do you think you are going to do that? The answer comes - dunno. Just very true of nearly 95% of the people I know. Raghu aptly put it on the show - saab aayenge aur bolenge banna hai, banna hai, banna hai... kya banna hai? pata nahi... karna hai, karna hai, karna hai... kya karna hai? socha nahi, time nahi hai... This statement is so powerful. And you should see the interviews to really understand them. They are, I would say performing a service to people here. Keep going both of you. Rannvijay, the host is the perfect foil. He is very calm and understanding. He knows when to say, ask what and how. Without him, the show would be incomplete. Its all the three of them who make this show a great success.

The 13 roadies who are selected have to travel to various places on bikes and they stay together. Every vote-out day one of them is voted-out by the rest (guy with majority vote-out votes leaves the show). They have tasks to perform and they are classified as money task or immunity task. A money task is one in which they win money to a roadie account and in the end that money goes to the person who survives till the end. The maximum the winning roadie can win is 5 lakh. Immunity tasks help you to get immunity to vote-outs. If you win the immunity task, you cannot be voted-out on the next vote-out. The game is nicely designed and it being a reality game adds more color to it.

Now the two major things that go on in the game show are - tasks and politics. Tasks help in winning money and immunity and politics helps in staying in the game and not being voted-out. The life is awesome and the people stay in 3-5 star hotels most of the time, they camp rarely. The part that is talked about the most is the politics and the back-stabbing and all, but the real reason this show was started was for the tasks. People get so blown away by the politics, that they forget that its the tasks that make the show or rather should make the show. The TRP of the show should have been tasks but with all the politics and all, they cease to be so. And the team that prepares the tasks must be a great bunch of minds, because I should say the tasks are just awesome. And they always continue to surprise me with newer tasks and the direction, the safety precautions, the hardwork they put into it. The team just doesn't prepare the tasks, but they themselves perform them to discover if the tasks are achievable. They experiment with it and then come to the conclusion as to what the complications of the task would be. And that is every bit as exciting as it sounds. And to see some of the roadies come here and just pass it as timepass pisses me off. I can't even bear to imagine what would the team feel when they would see the so-called roadies fail time and again even to put a decent effort. I feel that the roadies should care more about the tasks than about the link-ups and back-stabbings. One could say that they are just trying to survive in the conditions, but I feel that if one can do all that verbal talk to survive, one should back it up with substance and output.

I felt like talking about it after I finished roadies 5.0 finale. That one was the one which showed who a true roadie was. I want to comment on the injustice that I saw. It was awful. The finalists did nothing in the tasks, just played politics and here they were winning it. Just a shame. And Raghu was so pissed off with them. He came on the screen and blasted them off. I would say he underdid it. He should have disqualified them or done something to save the show. But alas he couldn't. His comment that I couldn't care less as to who among the two of you won was so correct that I wanted to double his salary. According to me the true roadies were Varun and Vikrant who did every thing for the spirit of the game. The 2 f**king bastards didn't even have a quarter of the spirit and passion that those guys had. Also the others like Simran and Aayaz who always gave their best. It is those who are the true roadies. I feel for them. The 2 finalists didn't have the balls to do anything. The show is great but these 2 have been the biggest disappointments. One of them got injured and did nothing in the task while on the other hand Aayaz with a scary accident was always in the tasks (and the accident itself was this one guys fault). The other was so shameless that he would come back from any task with a grin on his face even after not doing a percent of it. I am not naming them as putting their names would be a disgrace to me. I am so angry at present that even an agitated Raghu would feel like a sissy in front of me. I should say all the crews hard work went in vain. I just hope the 6th season churns all 13 good roadies. The 4.0 season was good. It was smooth and all the tasks had a group of worthy roadies to perform them. And for me, all of the mtv roadies in 4 days was so great, just amazing.

I would like to say that the show is great, the team (crew) is great, its just that the contestants who need to realize that show is about roadies and tasks and passion and giving your best. If you can do that, you have that, only then you should go for being one and not try to sit there and stir up conspiracies and spoil the spirit of the roadies.