TV stars sing national anthem

It’s sad that today we have to create videos to arouse a feeling of oneness with the nation,” says Sukesh Motwani, head of fiction programming, Zee TV. The channel will be airing a video with the top stars from all the daily soaps on the channel, singing the national anthem as part of the special episode of their prime time daily Jhansi Ki Rani.

“Rani Laxmibai, in the show right now, is rescuing her adopted child, and his father from the clutches of the British officials. Her life story is symbolic in many ways. At a very young age, she was fighting an outfit that became a massive empire later on. She had a bond with her motherland. That is the feeling we’re trying to promote aggressively with the music video.”

The channel, at this point, isn’t sure if they will release the video to be screened at cinema halls across the city. There are several National Anthem videos that are run before the movie starts at various cinema halls.

One features artistes from Marathi movies, another has top singers and musicians of the country including Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar and A R Rahman, and the third features army officials protecting the ice-clad borders of the country.

Last year, shortly before Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti released, a music video with the film’s top stars singing the National Anthem was released across various theatres.

Would Zee TV follow suit? “We haven’t thought about that as yet. As a channel, we only created the video to promote the feeling of national pride and unity,” says Motwani.

Given that the warrior queen in the show, played by Kratika Sengar, has reached a point where she will take on the British Army, it’s said that the show will wrap up over the next two months. “There are so many tiny stories attached to that final war, which led to Rani Laxmibai’s death,” says Motwani.

He adds, “I don’t think the show will wrap up in two months because there is a long drawn-out war sequence that we’re planning right now. But the story has a definite end and so does our show. Nothing goes on forever.”

Republic Day on sets of Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 4

Madhuri Dixit, Remo D’Souza and Malaika Arora Khan, the celebrity judges on Sony Entertainment’s Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 4, were surprised to find their panel decorated differently for an episode. Turned out that it was done to celebrate Republic Day on the sets of the show. All the contestants including Mahi Vij, Sushant Singh Rajput and Shekhar Suman and the judges recorded inspiring messages.

The panel had been decorated in the combination of the tricolour. Everyone revisited their days in school and college when it was a compulsion to attend the ceremony, regardless of what they were doing. Some of the contestants even recalled speeches, which they had given as students on this day in school and college.