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The singing reality show, Indian Idol, is one of the oldest and most popular shows we have on our Indian television. Every year lakhs of contestants and singing aspirants try their luck at the auditions and the chosen few get selected ahead to try more of their luck and their singing capabilities in the rounds ahead. A panel of three judges, with composer Anu Malik being a permanent fixture, judge and appraise them. A colourful aspect of Indian Idol is how these three judges give feedback in their characteristic way, with Anu Malik being the more caustic one.
Currently, in its tenth season, the panel now has Anu Malik, Neha Kakkar and Vishal Dadlani as the judges with Maniesh Paul as the host. However, with the advent of social media, the show is being mocked for choosing contestants based on the sob-stories that the aspirant has, while people accused the judges of not judging them based on their actual talent. Well, that's the story of any reality show these days, with even Amitabh Bachchan's Kaun Banega Crorepati going for these. tropes.
Now, a former aspirant has put up his experience of auditioning for the show on Twitter and reading the whole thing will make you anguished and even scared. Nishant Kaushik, who is an Australia-based author, had auditioned for Indian Idol in 2012 and he shared how inhumanly the aspirants were treated during the process, including abuse and manhandling. Sure, it happened six years back, and there is no way to verify the experience unless you are an aspirant yourself. But we have heard similar stories from some of the other aspirants, so let's delve deeper. Here's the thread -
Tweet 1
Brief, nonchalant thread about my auditioning experience at Indian Idol 2012 and why I think it is a perfect platform to destroy your dreams as opposed to its common perception as a breeding ground for talent.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 2
May. Mumbai. I rocked up at the venue more out of casual interest. On joining a queue 2 km long I noticed enthusiasts who had arrived there as though their lives depended on them. Some with their mothers holding Prasad, other rebels who had braved odds and traveled alone.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 3
I joined the queue at 7 AM. There were people who had arrived at 5 AM. Others who had camped overnight. False notion that early arrival = early audition. No one from the crew to dispel such notions. Gate opens 1 PM.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 4
In those long hours of waiting, no accessible toilets or food stalls or drinking water taps. If you step out in search, you risk losing the queue which you'd then have to rejoin. Anyway at 1 pm the long wait ended right? Wrong.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 5
At 1 PM we were herded toward a stage on the school ground where the previous year's winner Shriram was lip syncing to Desi Boyz. A volunteer amongst us was sought to go and grab Shriram's feet mid-performance and shout "I wanna be Indian Idol!" Reward promised : early audition.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 6
Sure enough, one aspirant fell to the bait. Fell at Shriram's feet. Dozens of retakes demanded by the director. When the aspirant said he couldn't do any more retakes, assistants on the set abused him and threatened to have him off the auditions if he didn't comply. He complied.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 7
These staged gimmicks went on till 5 pm. By this time, we had noticed that for a venue as large as a school and for a crowd in tens of thousands, the provisions were: 1 canister of water with a steel glass bang in the middle of the ground, and 1 toilet.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 8
When we asked the crew if we could step out to get lunch and water, we were told to do so at our own risk. As if auditions would begin any moment. Contestants who made enquiries about the actual commencement of auditions were either not responded to, or showered with vile abuses.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 9
(Quick digression to let you know that the contestant who fell at Shriram's feet like a hundred times in the lure of "early audition" never got an early audition. I bear testimony).
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 10
During all this I met two interesting aspirants: one med rep from an Indian village I don't remember the name of, who dragged his right foot in a broken slipper. And another, who was blind in both eyes. And then I saw the crew make a merciless meal of both of these kind souls.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 11
First the vultures came with their mic and cameras to the blind man, who said he had a scene's role in The Slumdog Millionaire. They first asked him to give a little speech about the history and status of his blindness, how does it feel to be blind, and what have you.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 12
Then they asked about his family. He said he had a mother who was now dead, leaving him orphaned and all by himself. Sudden twinkle in crew's eyes because they now had meaty content for a camera shot. They probed him in several ways on "what brings you here".
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 13
When none of his responses flew, they drafted a "response" on his behalf and read it out. Roughly, "I miss my mother and I wish she were here to see me, but I hope that when I sing tonight she can hear me up there." They made him repeat this even as his voice trembled.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 14
Hours passed by. At around 8 PM, we were finally given badges and ushered in. no auditions yet. We were taken to the basketball court where for hours at stretch we were made to scream "We LOVE INDIAN IDOL!" right before our voices were supposedly going to be tested.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 15
At this point one of the aspirants lost his shit and stood up, demanding to see where the auditions were happening, to see the judges. One of the crew members charged up to him and slapped him. In front of thousands of people. SLAPPED.A.CONTESTANT. Yes this happened.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 16
A scuffle followed. Crew members rescued their colleague who was assaulted, by dragging the contestant along the floor and evicting him from the room. Late into the night, we finally arrived in a corridor that had a line of rooms hosting the auditions.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 17
(Take a moment to reflect that by the time of the first round of audition some of us had been standing at that venue for almost 24 hours). Crew walked past us, randomly picking some of us to sing a couple of lines. Just like that, in the corridor, with no judges present.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 18
The naive thought this was a smart way to quicken the filtering process of worthy contestants. The smartass crew knew better. They giggled at the contestants who sang horribly, and directed them to the only room that had a camera inside it. The rest of us got non-camera rooms.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 19
The med rep with that broken slipper I told you about sang atrociously. Through a half-open door of the room with the camera, I overheard his "auditioning". A painfully bad rendition of "Likhe jo khat tujhe", to which the judges kept going "wah wah! now try a higher pitch?"
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 20
The med rep with that broken slipper I told you about sang atrociously. Through a half-open door of the room with the camera, I overheard his "auditioning". A painfully bad rendition of "Likhe jo khat tujhe", to which the judges kept going "wah wah! now try a higher pitch?"
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 21
That mockery went on. The judges relished that fellow's naivety, asking him to keep taking a pitch "higher and louder" till his voice turned into frail shrieks that sent them into peals of laughter. He came out in tears. Elsewhere in the corridor we heard of contestants fainting.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 22
I crashed out in Round 3 of the auditions close to midnight, and was nearly relieved when it happened. But I went home satisfied that I got a taste of a show that on TV had always appeared alluring. Shocked as I was by its reality, I was a wiser man by the end of the day.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 23
My summarized observation of Indian Idol was that it decorates and recognizes maybe 10 or less, very worthy participants annually. But en route it quashes a million people's hearts by disrespecting them, ridiculing and abusing them, denying them a conducive atmosphere to contest.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
Tweet 24
Not to mention the labourers who were hired to install and then disassemble the equipment at the venue. I don't even have the heart to mention how we were witness to the abuses they were being subjected to by the present staff.
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
The Conclusion
True talent is rare. But every aspiring artist's pride stems from the encouragement it gets from its colleagues and friends and mohallawallahs and family. In those little nooks and crannies, each of them is a "star". Reality shows have no right to disrespect that. <END>
— Nishant Kaushik (@nofreecopies) August 20, 2018
A case of sour grapes or a true depiction of what really happened? It's up to you to take the call. And if it is really true, then we really wish more aspirants come out and call out these shows for the callous attitude towards contestants.
Interestingly, Kaushik had been in news earlier for accusing Hichki director Siddharth P Malhotra in 2017 for plagiarising his script without giving him due credit.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 22, 2018 02:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
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