KYUNKI, men also watch them!Add to Clippi

Pune's men are as fond of the telly soaps as their female counterparts...if not more.

In a popular comedy show on the television, someone quipped that soap operas telling unending stories of love, treachery and betrayal are so popular with women that office-going men have to make tea for their TV-watching wives after they get back home.

The suggestion was that men are compelled to do all the household chores, and this because the ladies of the house turn into couch potatoes every evening.

If Pune were to be the yardstick of judgement, no other assertion can be so very wrong. For, the men in the city are as hooked to the television soap operas as their female counterparts. Rishabh Nath, a lawyer, started watching such shows because of his wife.

But, Nath is quick to admit, 'I will not lie. Now, my addiction to soaps is more than than my wife's. Even when she cooks, I never miss the soaps. We discuss these TV serials later."

Umesh Singh, a student of third year, Arts has other reasons to watch such serials. 'How many movies can you watch? I have watched most of the good films in Hindi. So in order to pass time, I now watch different TV serials.

They can get boring sometimes, but it's worth it," he says. If one asks him why he does not 'utilise" the boring time in studies, he answers, 'You caught me on the wrong foot there." Siddharth Shekhar is an executive working with a top insurance company.

'I have been watching these TV serials from childhood, yaar. Earlier, my mom used to watch them. I had to watch them because I had no choice. Later, my girlfriend used to watch them, and these days it is my wife who does the same. Of course, so do I.

" Rakesh Ghodpade is a retired army official. 'I have a lot of free time. But, I watch these soaps in the afternoons. In the evenings, my son and his wife get back home. So there is a battle for the remote. That is why I make sure I watch my favourite serials in the afternoons."

When the city's men admit to their addiction, why some of these serials are so phenomenally popular is easy to understand. The wrong theory, of course, is that the popularity owes itself to women alone.