The one thing that strikes you everytime you watch one of these - and by these I mean live televised events involving song and dance - that the Americans are so good at this and so much better than probably any other country. Not just countries like India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Pakistan. But even the U.K and other European nations.
There is a certain awkwardness and sloppiness that we excuse ourselves for because of the nature of the massive undertaking that anything like this ultimately is. I mean, no what who it is, there really isn't anyone who does this for a living. There aren't that many One-Time Only Shows that are watched by hundreds of millions of people in a year. For most of the people organizing the show it is probably a once in a lifetime thing. So the rarity of the occasion itself is so much more added pressure on the organizers.
Compare it with the way the Americans do their Oscars or Sporting events and there is a certain flair that the organizers display in the way they roll it out. Is it because they organizers have more experience doing this? Have they just been doing it longer than anyone else? Is there an actual trade that has grown out of this? Grand Multi-million dollar Mega Event organizers?
Whatever it is, it is painfully clear that Bangladesh is just as clueless as India.
Our imagination doesn't seem to be able to reach beyond the perfunctory, sad-sack dance routines by hundreds of pawns - uninspired choreography is never turned awesome by multiplying the number of people doing the routine. The random setting off of fireworks that has nothing to do with what's going on. Signing up a has-been rock-act that has as much to do with cricket or even a cricketing nation as Rakhi Sawant has to do with discretion.
A certain military monotonous regularity begins to creep in almost immediately as the first "Stadium Anthem" starts to blare from a sound system that is manned by a Wedding or Puja DJ on hire and not by a professional Sound Engineer who knows how to do Open-Air Concerts like the back of her hand. As if somehow the organizers have managed to extract every gram of entertainment out of the show and kept it hidden in an undisclosed location.
And I know as an organizer of a country that is not normally seen on the World stage, you want to showcase something that is unique and iconic about your culture and people - But no matter how stretched you are, ideawise, budgetwise or any otherwise, at some point somebody has got to have thought that this may not make good television and therefore has to be scratched from the evening's programme.
India makes exactly the same mistake everytime it gets a chance. It's as if we've built a box inside the box and are doing all our thinking from inside of it.
There is a certain awkwardness and sloppiness that we excuse ourselves for because of the nature of the massive undertaking that anything like this ultimately is. I mean, no what who it is, there really isn't anyone who does this for a living. There aren't that many One-Time Only Shows that are watched by hundreds of millions of people in a year. For most of the people organizing the show it is probably a once in a lifetime thing. So the rarity of the occasion itself is so much more added pressure on the organizers.
Compare it with the way the Americans do their Oscars or Sporting events and there is a certain flair that the organizers display in the way they roll it out. Is it because they organizers have more experience doing this? Have they just been doing it longer than anyone else? Is there an actual trade that has grown out of this? Grand Multi-million dollar Mega Event organizers?
Whatever it is, it is painfully clear that Bangladesh is just as clueless as India.
Our imagination doesn't seem to be able to reach beyond the perfunctory, sad-sack dance routines by hundreds of pawns - uninspired choreography is never turned awesome by multiplying the number of people doing the routine. The random setting off of fireworks that has nothing to do with what's going on. Signing up a has-been rock-act that has as much to do with cricket or even a cricketing nation as Rakhi Sawant has to do with discretion.
A certain military monotonous regularity begins to creep in almost immediately as the first "Stadium Anthem" starts to blare from a sound system that is manned by a Wedding or Puja DJ on hire and not by a professional Sound Engineer who knows how to do Open-Air Concerts like the back of her hand. As if somehow the organizers have managed to extract every gram of entertainment out of the show and kept it hidden in an undisclosed location.
And I know as an organizer of a country that is not normally seen on the World stage, you want to showcase something that is unique and iconic about your culture and people - But no matter how stretched you are, ideawise, budgetwise or any otherwise, at some point somebody has got to have thought that this may not make good television and therefore has to be scratched from the evening's programme.
India makes exactly the same mistake everytime it gets a chance. It's as if we've built a box inside the box and are doing all our thinking from inside of it.
