Last night’s episode of Bigg Boss 7 started with a shot of Armaan Kohli, he of Jaani Dushman–fame channeling Narendra Modi and saying “kutte ka baccha” though Kohli was tossing that one out amidst a bunch of expletives. Why? Who knows. Most of the time I think Kohli is suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome and needs immediate medication. But Kohli might have been foreshadowing something this time.
For a couple of days, Salman Khan has been saying that there’s a wild card entry. And while I expected some new washed out celebrity, horror of horrors was shown the sweetest golden retriever I have seen in a while, waiting to enter the house.
Now I’m a fan of films with animals. I grew up watching Born Free, Hachiko, Duma, Eight Below. Hell, I even found Cujo adorable. So you can imagine how my blood curdled when I saw this golden furball being let into what can only be described as an Ekta Kapoor-production of the Lord Of The Flies.
In case you don’t know what goes under in this house, there are currently 12 contestants who have been chosen from the bottom of the celebrity heap. Since it’s all relative, some seem more normal than the others. But this is like saying Norman Bates is more fun to hang out with than Hannibal Lecter or the monkey from Outbreak. This is a bunch of people which includes Tanisha, sister of Kajol, who has been fighting with all the contestants for 2 weeks because she believes that they once refused to give Armaan Kohli an egg for breakfast. ONE egg.
The rest of them are no better. They fight over the number of parathas, how much food the other is eating, whether there’s enough oil on their roti. It’s like looking into a soup kitchen for unruly self-centred publicity hungry people. How can you release an unsuspecting animal into their care? They’ll most probably eat up the poor dog’s quota of Pedigree and drink up his milk. I’d trust Armaan Kohli, Tanisha and Vivek Mishra (who in a prescient manner, taught the contestants how to do the dog posture in yoga just four days back) to look after an animal as far as I can throw them.
These are people who do nothing unless they get something in return. A wagging tail isn’t going to cut it for them. Kohli might even drown the dog in one of his fits of rage. You can forget about the dog being walked or groomed. This isn’t the first time that animals have been put in the Bigg Boss house. In Season 2 of Bigg Boss, they’d sent in a four month Labrador called Kut who stayed with the contestants for two days or so and was then taken out of the house – and most probably put in therapy after seeing Payal Rohatgi and Rahul Mahajan canoodling in the pool.
Big Brother has earlier had Brian the emu, Mr Tops the giant rabbit and Margaret the oyster – with whom contestants used to converse. Yes, because that’s what you should do with an oyster – talk to it. While all is fair in the world of reality TV, there really should be some lines which shouldn’t be crossed. Some parameters of compassion.
The 13 contestants who joined the house did so of their own volition and I’m sure will be paid handsomely for making fools of themselves on national TV. What about the dog? The opening shot of the episode set the tone for how he’ll be treated – when it showed him locked up in a windowless room trying to get out. Way to go, guys. Finally the last barrier has been crossed and the producers have moved from cruelty to humans (viewers) to cruelty to animals.
Where is Maneka Gandhi and PETA when you need them? PETA especially, since they’d hired Gauhar Khan and her sister to take part in their Boycott Zoos campaign. Dressing them up as tigers or was it cheetahs and placing them in cages for a photoshoot.
Maybe PETA could show as much compassion for this unsuspecting dog which has been placed in what can at best be called a zoo of the dysfunctional. But then, PETA must be busy wondering which new celebrity to dress up as an Olive Ridley turtle. The question is what will the dog do now that it’s been let loose where the wild things are?
Will it calm them down or will it fulfill one of my wishes and do to the contestants what Siegfried and Roy’s tiger did to Roy? I’m hoping for the latter. The producers might have sent the dog in to calm the frayed nerves of the contestants the way they do in detention centres and high security prisons housing murderers and rapists in the developed world.
But who will calm the dog after it witnesses the screaming matches and the fisticuffs that take place here? What therapy will he get when he leaves the home? All in all it’s safe to say that Bigg Boss cannot claim “No animals were harmed in the shooting of this programme”.
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