Dried up soap stories
Small Screen | Poonam Saxena
October 1, 2005
Come Navratri and all the saas-bahu-wallahs storm TV screens, waving dandia sticks and whirling all over the set in a blaze of magenta lehngas, chandelier earrings the size of the Niagra falls and enormous chokers that look like they'd cut off the wearer's blood supply. This is Navratri chic, saas-bahu style, mandatory even for the family aartis.
One wishes all this bonhomie and God-fearing goodness was a little more manifest in the serials themselves, where all the parivaars are constantly battling wicked home-wreckers, usually a woman. At last count, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kasauti Zindagi Kay, Sindoor, Astitva (and too many others to mention) – all had such a character. According to the profoundly limited and limiting Ekta Kapoor school of story-telling, such characters are necessary because they carry the drama forward. So, if the story is moving forward, it might end one day. One can only hope.
Besides, all these saas-bahu parivaars lead such frenetic, tumultuous lives, it would put the world's most advanced roller coaster to shame. They cry, fight, run away, lose their memory, swear vengeance, rape, kill, roll their eyes, simmer, seethe, scheme – and in such abundance, you wonder when they find the time for normal domestic activities like the month's grocery shopping.
Not that foreign soaps like The Bold and the Beautiful are any better. It's just that the characters have blonde hair and white skin. For as long as I can remember, Brooke and Ridge and the rest of them have led the most tortuous lives possible. Brooke keeps looking intensely into the camera, Stephanie just looks tense, and Ridge is too desperate trying to look hot and sexy to look anything else. Most of the action takes place in sets, the characters are invariably shot in tight-close-ups, and the end result is one of such claustrophobia, you long for the foreign locations of some of our soaps (yeah, even the saas-bahu ones). Like Zee's Rabba Ishq Na Hove, where much of the action takes place in Dubai. (Incidentally, the lead actress in this serial is Sangeeta Ghosh who could probably give Urmila Matondkar a few lessons in how to pout –and I'm talking of Urmila in her heyday, when she surely went to sleep with a rubberband around her mouth to perfect her constantly-in-place pout).
I know there are many people – chiefly women, I'm told – who're hooked on these soaps and serials, so clearly they're doing something right, but frankly, it's difficult to see what this something is. Unless it's just a recognition of the fact that viewers get into the habit of watching a particular serial and then can't kick the habit.
Since we are on the subject of actresses and mouths, Star News, which seems to have seriously pumped up the volume of its spicy, tabloidish shows, recently telecast a programme called Ab Tak 57. Apparently, there is a new film about to be released where the lead actress (called Hrishita Bhatt) has done 57 kisses. Ms Bhatt was interviewed and coyly admitted that the film had some "hot" scenes. But this is not the only interesting part. We were also told that the film is based on the life of Mallika Sherawat, since it is about a young girl who comes from a small town to make it big in the film industry. The equation is clear: Small town girl + several onscreen kisses = Mallika Sherawat.
Who said only TV serial and soap makers were short of story-telling ideas?
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