First Week Review - Bandini

Story: Bandini is the story of a girl who hails from a small , a village which belongs to  a diamond trader Dharamraj Mahiyavanshi and all the villagers are his employees. It is a restorative story of a young girl who is forced into a marriage of convenience with an elderly man twice her age. Set in the backdrop of rural , this narrative vividly traces the journey of Santu and her tryst with destiny. The show looks inspired from many Hindi novelists and their short stories on rural , and their struggle with the people who rule the village with their power and money.You can relate very well with the problem which used to exist or maybe still exists in our villages; unfortunately with the differences seen in caste, culture, high and lower class.

Concept: The story is based on pre-Independent rural India, but the set seems more or less like today's India. Little confused, right? But this is what it is all about, as Mahiyavanshi is a diamond trader with the whole village captured in his fist. The villagers cannot worship before he visits the temple, he has the right to banish anyone from the village at his own whim and fancy; basically the villagers are sort of bonded laborers of the Great Man. Hope the Human Right commission does not raise questions on the concept!. The show is novice in its approach and Balaji has taken a completely different path, experimenting with an altogether different genre. Unlike her other shows, Ekta has even gone back in times with this show. The language used by the villagers are sometimes hard to decipher and understand, as words such as "Mawri" with the typical Gujrati lingo, might be difficult for people living in other parts of India to grasp. Another questionable factor is the name of the lead protagonist "Dharamraj", and as described by Ronit Roy in a recent interview, "Dharamraj is a crude man and has no mercy on anyone", while we associate Dharamraj to the eldest of Pandavs Yudhistar.  Maybe Ekta has yet to come out of  the memory of her previous show, "Kahaani Humaarey Mahabharat ki".
 
Actors: Dharamraj aka Ronit Roy is looking royal, graceful and is living the character to the 'T'. There could have been no better choice than him to play this character on television at the moment. So casting is fabulous and flawless. As far as Santu (Aasiya Kazi) is concerned she is also doing her bit quite nicely and her style of speaking suits the role. So as the other cast especially Naanu, Moongi and  Khemi deserve a round of applause. They remind you of  characters straight from many novels of  Premchand and other writers of that era. The scene when Nanu has to sell off his "mawri" or cow to pay the debt of Dharamraj, rings bells in your ears of Godaan, a novel by Premchand. This was one touching and heart wrenching scene in the show, and surely the best scene of the first week. The best part of this show is that you are getting to see actors who are new to Balaji Klan and thus bringing  freshness to the whole  show.