| watch out for the modern age serial killers ! I am not talking of those in the most wanted list nor those serving life imprisonment at tihar jail .......but here comes the modern age serial killers......... |
| Kurleen Gaur, normally sweet-natured and unassuming, becomes a totally different person and starts throwing a fit (along with her melamine collection) if someone phones in the middle of her favorite show - the ultimate breach of protocol in contemporary urban India). |
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| The name of the game is Hindi soaps - not the cleansing kind, but the glycerine-laden family saga kind, where all fathers-in-law own 40 pairs of spotless, white, starched kurtas and all scheming sisters-in-law alternately sport green and grey contact lenses. Unleashed not so long ago on a gullible audience, the serials have created a parallel reality comprising spineless sons, manipulative mothers-in-law and outlawed in-laws. |
As daily routines go, everything from preparing projects to spending time on shopping to socializing gets regulated by the programme schedule for the day. And heaven help the uninvited guest or visitor at prime time. "But what to do?" Today, if anyone misses an episode, then that serial addict will become a serial killer and goes into withdrawal symptoms. So want to meet the moder day serial killer then go at the time of their favorite serial .
Further, designer saris, multichromatic lenses and monolithic mangalsutras are rapidly replacing TVs, fridges and washing machines as the latest range of FMCG goods (Fataak Maidens' Cable Garbage). "Woh Tulsiwali aur who disha wali sari dikhana," goes the housewife or any woman who wears saree and at the same time watches these soaps. The ever-vigilant shopkeeper, no lesser himself, sensing a good bakra voluntarily fattened for the kill, obediently shows Tulsi's and disha's sartorial accessories from the last episode - as well as dresses and sarees of all the positive and negative ladies of the TV .
An interesting phenomenon has been the plethora of corporate jargon in Hindi soaps. Today's small-screen hero spews forth a plethora of management terminologies like a Kotler-Prahlad clone gone out of control - never mind if he thinks that the Johari Window is something seen in the homes of Jaipur and Tom Peters is a brand of IMFL
Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, they came out with the promo - a montage of rapid-fire frames constituting wide-eyed expressions, frantic gesticulations, and finger-pointing reprimands; inevitably accompanied by the omnipresent slap. The whack, in turn, gets circulated in round-robin fashion - father to wayward son, mother to wayward daughter, heroine to catty (occasionally bitchy) sister-in-law and hero to manipulative friend - all to the cacophonic background score of Beethoven's fifth (or in extreme cases, Bhappi Lahiri's 55th). Unfortunately guhas of TD are on money saving spree so no new promos shown. but only tomorrow's clippings shown at the end of every episode.
So what happens next? Will MAHIKA become a Bombay bar girl from Borivli singing chantalage ( counting the number of slaps she received from DK )the new song remix produced by guhas? Will Baba (azuba) get to recite "baa baa black sheep" to his grandchildren and expecting great grand child? Will they show mahika's son's father was actually ET(extra- terrestrial) !! Only time - and Guhas - will tell.
Health and Fitness
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