| Aishwarya Rai in Devdas and (inset) Prerna strikes a similar pose in Kasautii... |
| Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and (inset) Check out the mandolin scene in Pyaar Ke Do Naam... |
| Sushmita Sen in her flowing chiffon in Main Hoon Na and (inset) Shweta Salve in a similar number in Left Right Left |
Seen it before?
The dj vu is not hallucinatory. It's just television directors running short of ideas. Be it sets, costumes or scenes, different frames in serials mirror popular film sequences. Evidently, the resemblance is not coincidental…
Kasautii Zindagii Kay begins as the love story of Prerna and Anurag, but turns into Devdas somewhere along the way. Cezanne Khan aka Anurag Basu is recognisable as the handsome, soft-spoken son of a rich father, while Shweta Tiwari aka Prerna is Paro, who gets married into a rich family and a husband she never loved. Yes, her much older husband has three children from his previous marriage, quite like in Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel.
The Barjatyas draw from their own, and their friends', films. Their serial Pyaar Ke Do Naam-Ek Radha Ek Shyaam mirrors films like Hum Apke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge et al. Pyaar… shows wedding sequences, complete with sangeet and antakshari ceremonies, that characterise Rajshri productions. Recently, the lead pair Indraneil Sengupta and Barkha Bisht unabashedly put on a Shah Rukh-Kajol (and sometimes a Salman-Madhuri) act.
Shweta Salve of Left Right Left is the middle-class man's Sushmita Sen. Be it the way she uses her eyes or her flowing chiffon saris, psychiatrist Dr Ritu Mishra's character takes up from where Sushmita Sen left off in Main Hoon Na. The serial is a take on life of cadets at a premier military academy, and Shweta plays the muse for the young students just like Sush did so in Main Hoon Na.
Compiled by Jaya Biswas
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