Off-screen nobodies - DNA

When Amarr Upadhyay was shown as dead in the popular series 'Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi' four years ago, it created a furore - prominently because the couch potatoes were too much in love with their favourite on-screen character. They wanted him alive!

Circa 2005 and surprisingly, Ronit Roy essays Mihir Virani in the same show, with as much fame. Even more astonishing is that today there are no takers for Upadhyay, proving once again that it is the characters that make celebrities rather than vice-versa.

Agrees Nivedita Basu, deputy creative director, Balaji Telefilms, "The idea of a daily soap is to permeate into the psyche of the viewers and that's why you see characters becoming celebrities more so often."

She cites the obvious example of Mona Singh (of 'Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin' fame). "Clearly, they remember the face, not the name," she says.

This phenomenon isn't new - the epic 'Mahabharat' and 'Ramayan' in the late '80s yielded many such celebrity characters. Most of them gained God-like status. But equally proven is the fact that these actors rarely emerged out of their characters with an identity of their own.

Puneet Issar, better known all his life as Duryodhana from 'Mahabharat', offers an interesting perspective. "It is very easy to get typecast in one image. The only way out of being trapped in a particular image is to keep doing other things simultaneously. Like, I was also doing films around the time 'Mahabharat' was at its peak, which really helped."

Arun Govil from 'Ramayan' feels that television today has a short memory span. "People remembered me as Lord Ram because 'Ramayan' was an epic. More so, it was about Indian culture and a part of our religion. Modern-day television characters are vanished in a year's time. There is no substance and no recall value. Though many serials of the late '80s and early '90s are forgotten, 'Ramayan' is still watched. Ram and Sita will continue to live on - these new guys will not."
s_ayaz@dnaindia.net