Two New Yorkers spend six months 18 months!?! in Bangalore and other places in India.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Rendezvous with Semi and Simi

semiI've been loving this show, which is on MTV India. Every episode is the same: the suspiciously mannish host has on fake versions of Indian celebs while constantly trying to get them to talk about her beautiful flowers, studio, spirituality, just about anything. With any luck, the celebs fight with either each other or with Semi. It's a little bit Dame Edna, and it's entertaining even if 75% of the humor (and the Hinglish) goes over your head.

The way that Semi is constantly bringing things around to herself while never being less than nicey-nice is a set-up familiar from many U.S. chat shows (*cough* Oprah *cough*). But I didn't even realize until now that Semi is a specific parody of one person in particular: Simi Garewal is a former Bollywood actress and documentarian whose own Rendezvous show evidently airs at the same time as Semi's. Unfortunately, it's on a channel we don't get. So someone's going to have to help me out and tell me what it's like -- from the web site, it's awfully earnest and just chockablock with caring and sharing.


simi

2 comments:

Spicy Chai said...

You may never see this comment, or someone may have already told you... the 'suprisingly mannish' Semi is actually Cyrus Sahukar, a man :)

Tripp Hall said...

Yep, I knew it was a guy . . .