Saas Bahu sankat comes to Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007

SRGMP has always had its roots in saas-bahu serials - its narrative powered by jazbaat and drama. Mussarat has been an object of dispute on this show. These two came together with a crackle last week and resulted in a jhagda that shook one contestant to the core and made Himesh Reshammiya look like a saas-bahu villian.

Here's how it went down. Mussarat sings songs in only one jonar - most people call it sufi, but its really a wide range of shababi stuff. And Vishal has endlessly needled him to bring more variety to his singing in order to prove his talent. This is something that has repeatedly gotten Himesh's goat because it tends to eat into Mussy's votes even when the man sings his heart out.

Faced with the prospect of Mussarat losing to Vishal-Shekhar's own chela Raja Hasan, Himesh got progressively more sullen on the show. Add to this the fact that Raja delivered a very ordinary (by his own standards, to be fair) rendition of "Hum The Woh Thi" from Chalti Ka Naam Gadi and his gurus - under pressure to save their last contestant in the show - promptly and rather amusingly leaped on stage and tried to fake a "great Raja performance".

Now I can understand Bappi joining them on stage but when long-standing Himesh chamchaa Ismail also bounded up there with them, it must have left the House of Reshammiya fuming. Later, he rather reluctantly joined the rest on stage and added some meaningless banter to the proceedings.

But when the show culminated in Mussarat getting kicked out, Himesh couldn't control his temper and out come the saas-bahu taanes. This was rather hilariously exploited by the SRGMP producers with their black and white crisis cam. For a while Vishal tried to defend a visibly striken Raja. Bappi tried to correlate all of this to the cataclysmic injustice handed out to Mauli and noted how unfair this duniya is. Himesh promptly shut him down. Mussarat looked like he wanted to be on a plane back home already.

So shaken was Raja that in the next show he veritably croaked out "Tenu Le Ke" from Salaam-e-Ishq. This doesn't bode well for the man - who at one point was clearly coasting on his status as the most bravura singer of the show. Interestingly the question now becomes: should he play it safe and stick to his genre to regain past glory or should he continue to explore his versatility and risk it all? In other words, to survive Raja might have to prove Himesh right and his own mentor wrong. Wah! Kya Bollywood twist hai!

More doses of Himesh were to come. This time over the ghasa-pita Aneek Sumedha one-sided romance. This reminded me of one of my closest classmates - fondly called Bond - who had multiple romances going on for years with girls who barely knew he existed. He even celebrated their birthdays and tracked their performances in exams down to marks breakdown by subject. And Aneek seems to be doing that. I wouldn't be surprised if he had turned out to be Lalloo Prasad Yadav's son, so deft is he in tweaking a potentially beneficial situation.

In any case: on to the singing. Aneek continues to be my favorite - probably more so because he could be the next Himesh Reshammiya in terms of being a continuous cheese-fest. His ability to fill his lungs to capacity in about 2 nanoseconds between lyrics in a song still amazes me. Sumedha sang beautifully but the shrillness in her voice turns me off every now and then. Poonam - whose sad-sack kahani is the cause of debate everywhere, no doubt fueled by the SRGMP media team itself - sang both her songs superbly although her song selection sometimes puts me to sleep. Amanat continued his upward trend of delivering entertaining performances.

Also:

• anu g points us to this interview with Shekhar where he riffs on SRGMP as a saas-bahu circus and predicts Himesh's upcoming strategy
  


• Sidekick has some advice for Sumedha and all the girls on the show


• Mind Rush's marvellous theory on why Himesh is pushing Aneek as Romeo


• Megan dreams of Himesh's peachy pink castle and hooks up with Kunal Khemu


• SRGMP spoof from Megan


• Priti imagines a Himesh-free future


• Sania would like you to join her campaign to kick Himesh off the show


• Himesh Besharmiya declared brain dead on rajahasan.com