Only a day after we celebrated Dussehra – the triumph of good over evil, the mega abhorrent baddie of Indian television, Bigg Boss 11, made its way to our living rooms.
The reality show premiered on October 1 and introduced the 18 nautanki flatmates, geared up to bring the Bigg Boss house down.
With 10 seasons down and the eleventh running, we all know the Bigg Boss drill by now – high on insult and low on intelligence. So, this season would be no different.
However, little did I realise that the new minions were already high on being the ‘Bigg Boss’ of TRP on Day 1. So, they got down to their age-old formula of sexist jokes and gali-galoch from the word go without wasting any (prime)time.
Zubair, the Sexist
Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Hasina Parker’s son-in-law Zubair Khan unpacked his box of goondagiri and cheap thrills. Zubair started a conversation in general with a non-veg joke (maybe it was a beef joke), ’cuz whatever it was, it wasn’t digested well by the Haryanvi artist Sapna Chaudhary. The Jat girl said ‘Chal hatt’ to Zubair and objected to such lewd language.
Zubair’s mafia blood boiled and ignored Sapna’s request and continued talking, bringing Sapna to tears. #HelloBystanderEffect
This wasn’t enough screen time for the man. Zubair almost got into a physical brawl with Puneesh Sharma, an owner of a club in Gurugram. Zubair was quick to take off his shirt and flex some muscles, and got into a full “tu jaanta nahi mein kaun hu” mode. #JustBeingBhai.
Soon, the other flatmates intervened, and like termites they damaged his TRP-driven tactic.
Hina, the Classist
But Bhai ko camera se alag karna, mushkil hi nahi na mumkin hai!
Zubair, the next day, kept his sexism quotient high and passed a comment when Hina Khan was sweeping the floor, “Bhagwan, aise khoobsurat bai (maid) sab ko de.”
Bai the way, Hina found that very demeaning.
“Aapne mujhe bai bulaya”.
This was all that the actor kept saying on loop. But, Hina forgot that by doing this drama, she was also disrespecting the profession and the helper who is probably keeping her house clean while she’s here minting money.
Tyagi, the Homophobe
On one hand, you had Hina making a classist disparity, while on the other, there was padosi Luv Tyagi, who made a gender disparity. Bigg Boss chahte the ki Tyagi plays the role of a homosexual character as a part of a task.
On hearing this, Tyagi made his disgust amply evident. If Tyagi’s behaviour wasn’t enough to irk us, he went ahead and carried a stereotypical hand gesture. Somebody needs to tell the Rajasthani dude that there is nothing eew about homosexuals and especially on a show that have had homosexual flatmates in the past.
The first episode itself was heavily-loaded with misogynist attitudes and distasteful conversations, and I’m scared of what lies ahead!