One of the most common leisure activities on picnics and trips was playing antakshri during bus/train journeys, especially; of course this is before video games, What’s App, etc. took over travel leisure. This still remains a popular travel time pass, in small towns. Have you ever passed by a bus load of kids or stopped alongside them at the signals? Raucous whoops mingle with strains of Bollywood hits. It’s the same antakashri which was raised to a music reality game show by one of the pioneering spirits of television — Gajendra Singh. In 1993, he presented Indian television with a new definition of music programming.

TV viewers till then were content with a weekly dose of Chaya Geet and Chitra Geet thanks to Doordarshan. DD too had its limitations with stilted anchoring and tacky props. Zee TV and Gajendra Singh were the first to take the bite. Knowing music, Bollywood music is the mantra, a game show around it would certainly not misfire. Not when it was modeled on an already popular concept – antakshri

There was the initial trepidation. “When I first presented the concept of Antakshari 10 years ago, people asked me if I could even manage to make 10 episodes with the concept! And all I could say was: I think we can make it,” he averred in an interview with this writer in 2003. “Today I can say proudly that though it is 10 years now, we are still getting the same response as though it’s a brand new show. It has brought cultural values to the front that was missing. One time it was a game we played as kids, today it has become a slogan, a buzzword. It’s an amazing feeling. I never thought we would complete 10 years.”

With hosts like Annu Kapoor and Pallavi Joshi who hosted it from 1994 to 2005, Antakshari grabbed eyeballs, got branded as Close Up Antakshari, Sansui Antakshari, Titan Antakshri. Gajendra Singh got his first mention in the Limca Book of Records. Years later, Antakshri — title, format and Gajendra Singh shifted networks from Zee to Star.

Antakshri wasn’t the only music-based show Gajendra Singh evolved. He created a platform for aspiring singers to get a hearing with Sa Re Ga Ma, again on Zee TV. This creation of Gajendra Singh gave rein to the country’s singing talent to showcase their voices and emerge as potential singers way back in 1995. Sa Re Ga Ma yet another long running show, brought talent out from small town India.

Gajendra Singh wasn’t happy to rest on the laurels of these indigenous seminal music reality and game shows. He was ever trying to cut through the saas-bahu clutter. In the same interview with this writer, Singh said “If you remember, in the last 10 years or so when everyone was doing serial, fiction, mythology, etc. I came up with Antakshri and Sa Re Ga Ma. I was always looking for something different, I wanted to do something in fiction. All the channels were doing the same thing.”

“Saas-bahu is dal-roti for the channels but viewers also want makhanwalla chicken People are fed up now…..” His makhanwalla chicken was Awaaz: Dil Se Dil Tak. An adventure and family drama. Where a plane crashes and the few survivors are on a remote island. “I wanted to give the viewers a visual change.” So Awaaz: Dil Se Dil Tak was shot in Mauritius and India. “ For the first time a daily has a change of locations. Otherwise they are in one room or house. Here there are different homes, locations and the outdoors.”

Gajendra Singh continued to push the music genre onward with varied format shows like Voice of India I & II, Chotte Ustaad and an Indo-Pak reality show Surkshetra.

Detractors may please note, Sa Re Ga Ma was first telecast a good five years before the Pop Idol/American Idol series were aired in their respective countries viz Britain and USA.