Simi Aunty is here again!

Simi Garewal is back on the small screen again with her new show “Simi Selects India’s Most Desirable”. In it she interviews the “hot and single = desirable” people of Bollywood. Apparently she will diversify beyond Bollywood but that hasn’t happened yet. Garewal has tried the talk show thing a few times now, with her most recent attempt before “Simi Selects” being on “Rendezvous with Simi Garewal”, but her shows have never really taken off. If you watch any of them you’ll see why; the lady has neither wit nor chutzpah, or even the very basic gift of the gab. Well, “Simi Selects” is no different. Touted by the lady to be different (she is the writer/producer), the show is the same old annoying stuff in the same old bottle. Plus, Simi’s gotten way more cheesier (if that’s possible).

On the first installment she had on Ranbir Kapoor – and you can’t get more established than that. Ranbir of the famous Kapoor clan is the current happening star; every alternate film stars him. Plus he was linked with the very lissome Ms. Padukone. The love story did not have a happy ending, Deepika hinting in public interviews that it was because of Ranbir’s infidelity.

Anyway, Ranbir came on, was feted and praised by Ms. Garewal for being so handsome, and desirable and such a good boy. Yeah, then she showed snippets of his Mom Neetu and Dad Rishi and they said pretty much the same: such a great son, a sensitive little boy . . . blah, blah, blah. Simi fawned on, and oohed and aahed at the right moments. Ranbir, to his credit took it all in stride, and behaved really nicely with Simi Aunty. I’m lucky that the show ended when it did; had it gone on any longer and heaped any more praises on Ranbir, I might have had to build him his very own temple.

After I watched that, I haven’t really cared to tune into any other editions of her show, but I did see the show yesterday after I saw an ad. which showed her featuring one of my favorite actors – Abhay Deol. Abhay picks interesting films to work in, notably Manorama Six Feet Under, DevD and Socha na tha. He was also in Aisha and the very recent “Zindagi na milegi dobara”. So his choices are very different from what one would expect out of a Deol boy.

Sunny, the eldest brother was quite the star, but mostly acted in commercial projects. Bobby, his younger brother hasn’t veered off that course much. Abhay, the youngest, has picked a very different path, doing mostly hatke films – so figured he’d be very un-Deol-like. Which he was. He was also very rad, and a tad eccentric, which I hadn’t expected at all.

This show was very much like the previous. Simi was in full form, with the fawning and the overarching plaudits, although I daresay that they were better deserved here rather than in Ranbir’s case. Then, in case you missed this, she also did her “Minefield” section, where she judges the contestant’s shit-taking abilities by role-playing with them. She assumes the role of Kiki, the most annoying girlfriend in the entire world (in my view) and then proceeds to have Kiki talk like a mentally challenged child, lisping her words together, and batting her eyelashes like she thinks an annoying girlfriend would do. She did this to Ranbir too, and after watching her Kiki-playing abilities, I’ve got to say that Ranbir and Abhay tolerated her a lot better than I did.

Garewal is 64, and she looks very good for 64. It is another story that she hasn’t gotten any better with her television show-hosting capabilities with age.