India Masala

Last night, between 9 pm and 11 30 pm, my phone was working over time. Calls were going back and forth, messages were being exchanged and opinions voiced – all of them discussing only one thing – the inmates of Bigg Boss, Tritiya (as host Amitabh Bachchan calls it.)

Why is Rakhi Sawant’s mother in? Why does Kamaal Khan call himself KRK? Sherlyn Chopra as a bai in the house? Not just me, but a lot of  bloggers and netizens were updating Twitter and Facebook with every little detail of yesterday’s launch episode.

Shows like this, as Colors CEO, Rajesh Kamat told me last week, may not be in the league of a Balika Vadhu in terms of ratings, but they get talked about much more than the regular daily soaps, which builds the buzz around the channel.

Getting Amitabh Bachchan as host, he said, was enough to create all the buzz they needed, and Bachchan proved last night that he had lost none of his KBC charm, drawing in the audience as easily as he had done four years ago.

Like I have said before, I love watching Bigg Boss, voyeuristic though it may seem, and inmates like Rahul Mahajan, Rakhi Sawant and even Carol Gracias made the show even more interesting for me.

This time around though, I didn’t see anyone that would stir things up a little bit, but I do find myself rooting for Mrs Jaya Sawant – just by virtue of the fact that she is the most unusual choice for a Bigg Boss inmate; the rest seem like the usual suspects.

What about you? Who are you rooting for?