The Moment of Truth

This evening as I was surfing channels on my TV, I stumbled upon the programme ‘The Moment of Truth’ on the Star World channel. A guy called Josh was on the ‘hot seat’ and by the time he’d answered 15 questions and decided to quit the show, I thought his marriage was all but over. I make this observation after having seen his wife’s reaction – especially over two of his answers viz. that he’d dated a transsexual and had physical relationship with a porn star(Or was it all a put on to make the programme more authentic? One really needs to take many of these reality shows with a pinch of salt, as people are willing to do anything for their 15 minutes of fame).
I’d posed this doubt of mine on another forum and I repeat it yet again. Why do people get to do this? One understands that one gets a lot of money if all the questions are answered and I believe there’s a total of 24 of them, getting intensely personal as the contestant reaches the pinnacle.

Can one sacrifice relationships just for the sake of money as life is all about understanding the sensitivities of people that matter in one’s life?

For those of you who’re not with me as yet, a brief explanation about this programme would be in order. A contestant is made to go through intimate aspects of his/her life under a polygraph test –through the use of the truth serum(Incidentally, the veracity of the polygraph test is yet to be established even today). When the individual comes on the show and sits on the hot seat, questions are asked by the moderator and the answers provided are cleared after validating them with the earlier answers given under the influence of the truth serum. It goes without saying that both the answers must match to get the contestant to go to the next level.

The ‘desi’ version had come on as ‘Sach Ka Saamna’ and I was a keen follower of the programme. But the last episode had my favourite small screen actress, Roopa Ganguli – Draupadi, of the Mahabharat fame – who was sadly, a pale imitation of her former self and especially, after having lived life on her terms. Her weepy and under confident visage still remains etched in my mind and I really felt bad for the poor lady.