Chewing On Disgust

Over the last decade, the Goenka household in Gurgaon has helped uphold the sacred institution of TV dinners. The women of the household have given Ekta Kapoor her bread and butter. But though they hadn’t ever bought into the hype of reality TV, the noise around sks forced them to stretch their daily television schedule by an extra half hour. Seven members of the ten-strong family couched themselves in to watch the show’s eighth episode, and even before the operatic sks theme could play itself out, Renuka, 58, was heard protesting, “I don’t want to watch this repulsive rubbish. The promos are sick enough.”

The show’s host, Rajeev Khandelwal, didn’t disappoint. One of his first questions to the recently married Olwin D’Souza was, “While being physically intimate with your wife, have you ever thought of another woman?” Yes, came the reply. Renuka chimed in with an “I told you so”, and her daughter-in-law Abhilasha stopped playing with her nine-month-old son to raise her eyebrows in disbelief. Her husband, Anshuman, however, looked bemused. “A bloody easy way to win a crore,” the MNC employee chuckled. Olwin claimed to be feeling lighter, his wife Purvashree was seen smirking, but Anshuman’s mother was still incensed. “All they are trying to do is create a rift between the couple,” she asserted, and it proved to be her night of vindication when Khandelwal prodded, “Have you ever desired a different wife?” Abhilasha playfully repeated the question to her husband, who then flailed his arms in the air, saying, “This is clearly not a family show.”