B-Plan for a new genre

Before I go on to define the vision for the new genre which needs to be initiated on the small and large screen, I would like to list out a few novels/books which can be converted into films/TV serials and thus give you an idea about what I am talking about:

1) All books by Paulo Coehlo - The Alchemist, 11 Minutes, The Witch of Portobello and all others.
2) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
3) Books by Richard Bach - Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion and others.
4) Conversations with God 1,2,3 - Neale Donald Walsch
5) Biographies of Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Ramakrishna Parahansa and other spiritual giants.

Before I go ahead, let me elaborate some concepts further:

1. Animation Channel/Segment: The phenomenal success of Hanuman, Krishna, Ganesha and other animated sequences in recent times has shown the potential to attract the ‘Cartoon Network’ generation. These young kids are fascinated by whatever is on television as long as it is animated. This ‘captive audience’ can be provided stories and folklores from Upnishads, Puranas and other scriptures which transmit Indian values to thee formative brains. In fact, presence of ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ provides a lot of ready made material to be converted to an animation channel/segment based on Indian values as soon as the necessary resources are mobilized for it.

2. Shastraath – A Talk Show: The Indian television space today faces a surfeit of ‘talk shows’ which move around a bush on social, political, economical and cultural issues. While such programs are necessary to answer certain essential questions, any individual (especially youth) face certain existential questions (which are at the core of all other superficial/material issues) for which there is no platform. These are some very basic questions which the scriptures like Upnishads and Srimad Bhagwat Gita take up in great detail, such as:

a) What is the goal of our lives ?

b) How is happiness achieved ?

c) Why we do get pain in our lives ?

d) Is there a God ?

e) Why does he give pain ?

f) Is there something wrong with the 'system'/us ?

g) Who should/will change it/us ?

h) How ?

Shastraath, a talk show, shall bring on one platform, spiritual giants, acharyas and gurus, on the one hand and worldy and so called ‘successful’ people on the other with these issues at the forefront to debate in the true ancient Indian tradition of ‘Shastraarth’ to find answers to queries raised by participants and audience. The audience shall judge the relative pros and cons of paths suggested by various panelists and how it has affected their lives and that of the society.

3. Spoof of ‘trash on Indian TV’: Give the enormous amount of trash being meted out on Indian television, there is an urgent need to spoof and parody television programs and media content which harms Indian values. For example, the famous ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ series and all its subsequent sequels can be spoofed as ‘Kyunki Sauce Bhi Kami Tamatar Thi’ as a comic series to highlight the shallowness of such programs. Similarly, other media content can be spoofed and parodied to show the hollowness of such programs to Indian audience. In the US, Comedy Central has show swith Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert which take a major dig at discrepancies in US news space. A similar trend can be started through Pragya.

4. Integrating Spiritual Ideas from the Western World: While there is a plethora of content and stories about spiritual journeys in Indian literature and scriptures, the modern day Indian youth is more impressed by similar ideas expressed by western authors. Some such authors, such as Paulo Coehlo, Neil Donald Walsch and Richard Bach (Jonathon Livingston Seagull, Illlusion etc.) have written many bestsellesr which have a following of millions in India too. In fact, Paulo Coehlo’s most famous novel, ‘The Alchemist’, a wonderful and captivating story about the life/spiritual journey of a shepherd is being made into a motion picture by Warner Brothers. Walsch’s ‘Conversations with God’, a humorous and insightful book has the potential to be made into a TV series on the lines of the famous blockbuster, ‘Bruce Almighty’ (a major hit among youth given that it touched spiritual issues and was also comical). A short movie has already been made about the same book.

5. Matrix like movie/TV series on Upnishads: The famous English movie ‘Matrix’, a metaphysical quest about a character called ‘Neo’ takes a lot of references from Upnishads and the alst sequel also ends with a shloka from Upnishad, ‘Tamasoma Jyotirgamya…’. The Upnishads have a lot of concepts which given a good creative team, visualizers and animators can be scripted into beautiful stories for both the large and small screen. My research about similar movies made in US revealed that the presence of ‘spiritual issues’ along with ‘special effects’ to symbolize spiritual quests/adventures in motion pictures has resulted in some of the biggest hits of all time, such as ‘Lord of The Rings’ (Christian fable) and Matrix (Upnishads and Nietzsche’s philosophy).

6. Programs on spiritual giants of India: While a lot of TV programs have been made on political leaders or even mythological figures, programs on recent spiritual giants like Vivekananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Raman Maharishi and other such names ned to be made in order to inspire youth to follow their footsteps. There is a large number of youth who cannot find heroes with characters strong enough to idolize.

7. Inside India (talk show): India today is fast aping the top-down capitalistic society in the US where all the power is vested in central organizations (private or public) in a few cities. This leads to monopolistic control over both businesses and administration. In US, a less than 10 conglomerates own around 60% of the wealth. In India too, emergence of Ambanis (Relaince) and other business houses which are horizontally and vertically integrated are capturing the businesses of small business houses in many industrial sectors. In addition, the British Raj legacy has completely wiped out the concept of a bottom-up ‘Gram Swaraj’ approach for administration (espoused by Gandhiji also) from the minds of the ruling intelligentsia.

A debate about these systemic anomalies and its implications on the resulting consumerist society is must and should involve not just those in the limelight but also those who are working outside the ‘recognized’ systems as NGOs or individuals to raise these issues.

8. Mall, Multiplex aur Multi-storey: A comic series/film highlighting the monotonous mundane life in cites where people live isolated in high rise building, flooding out on roads to crowd malls and multiplexes on weekends returning to their robotic lives for the rest of the week without any change. The futility of a top-down capitalistic society where the rat-race extracts all and people are driven by the need to outdo what their neighbors have rather than their own true needs.

I shall elaborate more on the vision and the objectives of this genre/channel/programs in the weeks to come. In the meanwhile I look forward to your comments about my ideas so far...