Dull gyaan for haters

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After the sugar rush of shows like Koffee With Karan & Friends and Simpering Simi, the idea of Love2HateU (Star World) seemed interesting. Pick a celebrity, find that celebrity’s hater and put the two in a room for a chintan baithak.

I thought, maybe, we’ll get Salman and Shah Rukh in a room together. Or, perhaps, Advaniji and Manmohanji. Mayawatiji and Rahulji. Anna Hazare and Suresh Kalmadi. Kanimozhi and Kiran Bedi. Oh! The list was endless and exciting. But Love2HateU is not about excitement. It is doggedly about being dull. That is why the “shahenshah of dullness”, Arjun “Awkward” Rampal, is its host. And instead of chasing celebrities who hate other celebrities, Love2HateU goes after young tweeting people, the same lot who have the full attention of Kapil Sibal these days.
The show, as it has been planned, is loaded in favour of the hated celebrity. The celebrity knows that s/he is going to meet his/her hater; the aam hater doesn’t. First toh “Awkward” Rampal arrives, all stiff, conscious, unkempt and undecided about whether he should keep his arms or chop them off. Celebrity is introduced to us in hyperbole and to the hater via a video clip. The hater, meanwhile, is busy hating in another room, with actors posing as this and that.
The first episode I watched was with Chetan Bhagat. His hater for the day was Roshini Sharma whose main objection was that Bhagat posed as a mahatma, a youth icon, a litterateur, while his books were banal and boring. “Just say you are a marketing genius who writes claptrap, and I’ll live happily ever after,” she told him. Good girl! But just then Awkward Rampal arrived and started speaking in defence of Bhagat — “many people like him... they buy his books... is it his success that bothers you...”
Some tu-tu-main-main later, hater recorded Hate-o-Meter rating — five being highest and zero being love — while Bhagat turned to the camera to give some fatherly advice to hater: “Find love. Don’t spend your energy hating me. Do something creative.”
Same thing happened when Farhan Akhtar came face to face with Sandeep Vasudevan who hated him for acting, singing and, most of all, for remaking Amitabh Bachchan’s Don. When Farhan said that he had remade his beloved Don for his children, hater rolled on the floor screaming, LOL, LOL, LOL. Hater stuck to hating, celebrity stuck to giving gyaan about hating.
The best celebrity so far has been Farah Khan. Charming and clever, she disarmed her hater, little boy Nilesh, by agreeing that Tees Maar Khan was a bad film. And she didn’t just take on board hater’s opinion but also him, as assistant director for her next film. Hate turned to love and “Awkward” Rampal gave a group hug and the dullness finally got over.