The sight of Raghu Ram shouting âchutiyaâ at men cowering between their towering biceps has aged like an average Bengaliâs digestive system; most parts acidic and some parts tired.
If you are somehow unfamiliar with Roadies, it is â over 16 seemingly endless seasons â the reality television counterpart of Hauz Khas village on a Saturday night. Thereâs incessant bro-ing, bhai-ing and babe-ing. And like a man who has had the misfortune of crossing a car with a Haryana number plate, you are also treated to an entire vocabulary of words that combine mothers, sisters and genitals. Thereâs also some dangling off ropes, walking over hot coals, and eating garbage; which again, is a clever euphemism of the lives of women who live and drink anywhere within a 100 kilometre radius of the Yamuna.
The Amit Shah of this dystopia â to a generation which doesnât have to google Aftab Shivdasani and is still kind of confused about what âAFâ means â was Raghu Ram. Raghuâs primary job in the show was to dismantle men auditioning for Roadies as if they were crispy-skinned samosas. While some of these men appeared less evolved than say even a brinjal, others were just regular, starstruck young men.
It was in equal parts terrifying and fascinating to watch Raghu shower expletives on them, circle them like an Uber which just wonât come to your pick-up point, shout at them, and call them worthless, untalented nincompoops whose lives amount to nothing.
Some times, some of these men and women, would then break down on TV. Iâd watch with wide-eyed fascination as they left the âinterrogation roomâ, sniffling and furiously wiping their tears, as a soft spoken anchor patted their backs and said âbest of luckâ for the selections. My mortified mother, who once watched a couple of episodes of the sixth season with me, reminded me of the time I accidentally dipped four fingers in boiling oil while frying luchi.
âIf you do something like that on purpose, it doesnât make you strong. It makes you stupid!â she exclaimed, as distraught contestants filed out of the audition room and told the anchor in shaky voices that that experience will only make them âstrongerâ.
The Roadiesâ definition of masculinity and perseverance was as meaningful as Piyush Goyalâs opinion on Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee. But like the latter, it still resonated with people and bots.
âRaghuâs primary job in the show was to dismantle men auditioning for Roadies as if they were crispy-skinned samosas.â
I watched a few episodes of the last season of Roadies that was aired this year and things looked pretty similar and involved young boys and girls ready to bite each otherâs heads off. The new twist was to not make just the millennials look like they need to have their phones taken away, pocket money frozen and threatened theyâll be banned from using words like âFMLâ unless they started behaving like adults with brains. There are âmentorsâ like Nikhil Chinapa and Neha Dhupia, who are also required to fake squabble on behalf of these kids. In his defence, Chinapaâs tortured face did remind me of Abhishek Bachchan frozen on the stage as the Ambani kids frolicked all around him at that wedding.
Ever since I decided to learn and read actively about mental health â I battled crippling anxiety for years and it was only diagnosed years later thanks to my ignorance about mental illness â Iâve wondered how being on these shows affect these people.
When Raghu and his brother Rajeev, who also worked on the show, quit in 2014, a report quoted him as saying, heâd âhateâ to be a part of the show again. He claimed that he did not want to be typecast as a âloud, obnoxious, on-air personalityâ. He also added that his value lay in the fact that they had created the longest running reality show on Indian television, but that did not mean they couldnât create something completely different.
Which brings us to Skulls & Roses, a reality show streaming on Amazonâs Prime Video.
Conceptualised by and starring Raghu and Rajeev, Skulls & Roses is a mash-up of Splitsvilla and Roadies and youâre right to reach for that Disprin at the mere sound of it.
If youâve forgotten Splitsvilla, it was that show where people believed to be Roadies-rejects were required to call each other names. The emotional trajectory of contestants on Splitsvilla usually follows the course of messages in the âothersâ inbox of a womanâs Facebook account â they start with a heart emoji and end with a middle finger emoji.
This has been faithfully replicated on Skulls and Roses.
The show opens with the voice of Raghu Ram asking âWhat happens when you get beaches and castles together?â
While the normal, non-seditious and patriotic answer would be âAntillaâ, the voiceover moves to the next question without waiting for an answer. âWhat happens when you bring hot young girls, and young, willing boys together,â the voiceover asks. Youâd think the answer is either âLokhandwalaâ or if you are charming like me, âthat is not even a questionâ. But you are soon bombarded with visuals of young men and women either cuddling or screeching like a mixer-grinder.
After the first shot of the swimsuit-clad women contestants walking in slow motion, the camera quickly moves in to close ups of their bodies as the girls take off their cover-ups: close abs shots, close boob shots and repeated, slo-motion close-ups of sarongs and t-shirts coming off. There are also sequences of headless torsos fondling each other, especially shots of a man fondling a womanâs boobs.
One half of the show involves proving the contestants are ready to be cast for Raaz 43: they can scream, they speak gibberish and they are absolutely comfortable with nonsense.
Obviously reluctant men and women are put in awkward situations â like making fake orgasm sounds on a microphone, painting each other with their hands, making Kamasutra positions etc. The other half, involves showing their #fitnessfreak creds by climbing stuff, running through fire, or wrestling each other in a slithery oil-soaked ring.
In the first few âromanticâ tasks, both men and women expressed how deeply uncomfortable they are, considering they had not known each other very long and getting that close physically was awkward. In the very first episode, a woman called Angel complains that her partner Sahil for a âchemistryâ photoshoot was being unable to perform well. The man in question had a valid problem â he barely knew the girl he said and it was odd for him to get intimate with her in public like that. Angel, irritated with the manâs reluctance, decides to kiss him on his mouth, without a warning. Basically she sexually harasses him in front of a whole television crew, violates the manâs right to consent and neither the crew shooting the show, nor Amazon finds a problem with this.
âBasically she sexually harasses him in front of a whole television crew, violates the manâs right to consent and neither the crew shooting the show, nor Amazon finds a problem with this.â
In another episode, men and women are required to slap paint on each otherâs bodies. In one post task AV, one contestant giggles and says how the man she was painting on apparently said: âMat kar, mat kar, erection aa rahi haiâ. If an erection had its own Sooraj Barjatya film, I am sure this would be the title track.
The uncomfortable disregard for consent aside, the show is an exhausting showcase for everyday conversation in North India. If the ruling party even considered a âone nation, one gaaliâ campaign, Iâm pretty sure âchutiyaâ would win hands down. Everyone calls everyone a chutiya on Skulls and Roses.
Youâre probably thinking youâd watch Housefull 4 for your annual reminder that humans suck, save yourself the money and watch this instead. Fat shaming, slut shaming, harassment, shouting, it is as if the show picked out the most infuriating people they could find and threw them together.
Sahil, the only man on the show without six-pack abs, got called the following names throughout the show: âyeh mota kya kar legaâ, âmendhakâ, âgada dhari bheemâ, âwalking potatoâ and was mocked by every contestant on the show. I couldnât choose what was more traumatising:o realise that eventually these humans will leave the sets of Skulls& Roses and will be out walking amongst innocent civilians, or to try to unsee repeated close-ups of a man dabbing colour on a girlâs side boob.
Skulls and Roses seems to suggest that you may have the empathy of a door knob, but as long as you can flail your arms wildly and string two insults together, youâre a survivor. In which case, they can hold the next audition on a Arnab Goswami debate, maybe?