Before Zindagi inspired confidence in the market that Urdu serials can be young, lively and modern, in the mushrooming bouquet of general entertainment channels, Urdu channels existed at the far end of the band width as some sort of obligation very much like the Muslim friend of the mainstream Hindi cinema. You sympathise with him but he is not considered productive enough to catch the eyeballs.
The production values are not at par with the Hindi entertainment channels and there is lot of repetition of old shows in the name of nostalgia. Like you can still find a young Rahul Roy with Arun Govil and Vijendra Ghatge in Kaise Kahoon on Zee Salaam. The serial was first telecast on Zee TV in 2001. Or you can listen to a much younger Pankaj Udhas singing “Chitthi Aayi Hai” on DD Urdu. Zee Salaam has more religious content. Like its Hindi counterparts it also switches to telemarketing ads at midnight. If Aastha sells the locket of Hanuman, it trades lockets of Allah.
However, all is not hunky dory. When most news channels took a one sided view on Charlie Hebdo incident, ETV Urdu came up with a well-rounded discussion on how cartoons can be offensive and where to draw the line. DD Urdu also stands out with its social programming. Going beyond the pale of any particular community, it shows the development of village in Haryana in terms of education, irrigation and drainage. It follows it up with Sudhir Mishra’s Main Zinda Hoon as if reminding that the quality programming is still alive. No doubt it is lacking in gloss but with its rich archive it can make up with its content by giving it a contemporary touch. There is talk about the quality of the language. While DD Urdu is chaste, ETV Urdu dilutes it a little too much. Perhaps the answers lies in what Javed Akhtar is doing for a DTH platform. As they say a language is a flowing stream. For Urdu it is nothing new. It’s time to take a dip in this estuary of composite culture.
