In my Parlour
Chaya Unnikrishnan
Posted online: Friday, May 19, 2006 at 0000 hours IST
From the late-night soap Lipstick aired a couple of years ago on Zee, Remix a campus caper on STAR One to India Calling culling the activities of a call centre, Shristi Arya has chosen contemporary subjects to weave her stories.
From the late-night soap Lipstick aired a couple of years ago on Zee, Remix a campus caper on STAR One to India Calling culling the activities of a call centre, Shristi Arya has chosen contemporary subjects to weave her stories. Now, her latest soap aired on SAB has a Beauty Parlour as its premise. "I love making serials that interact with reality," she avers. Shristi wanted to produce a serial that took women away from the kitchen and yet shared a close bonding. "Beauty parlour is one place where women shed their inhibitions completely and readily share their joys and sorrows," she believes. That's how Twinkle Beauty Parlour happened. An amalgamation of various beauty parlours Shristi has seen and observed, Twinkle... caters to middle-class women and is situated in a downtown housing locality. Lajpat Nagar in Delhi serves as its backdrop, The ...Parlour turns out to be a haven for its protagonists to unwind and talk about their problems. Owned by Ranjana (Narayani Shastri) and Fatima Bi (Sulbha Arya), the beauty parlour is a regular hot-spot of gossip for Niyati (Smita Bansal), Ragini (Manini De) and Sameera (Simple Kaul). Ranjana lives with her daughter and has a troubled past which unravels as the serial progresses. Fatima Bi is a jovial person whose favourite pastime is gossiping, Niyati is a homemaker trying to cope with the difficulties of raising two children and Ragini, a lawyer has problems with her adolescent daughter. The youngest of all, Sameera is a failed model married to a man twice her age. She is glamourous, manipulative and bitchy. Boasting of an ensemble cast, the serial has veteran actress Sulbha Arya working for the first time in her daughter-in-law's production. "The first time I talked to her about the serial was while we were dining and she said "not at the dining table," laughs Shristi. It was only when the entire role was narrated to her that Sulbha Arya gave the go-ahead. "The character is very interesting, much like me, happy-go-lucky and positive. However, there is one major difference and that is I don't gossip," grins Shristi's ma-in-law adding "Apart from that, there's nothing special about working with Shristi." For Narayani, Twinkle... happened at a time when she needed a break after the heavy-duty drama of Piya Ka Ghar. "Twinkle... is a light-hearted soap and the character I play has something of me in it," reveals Narayani. As Ranjana, Narayani plays a carefree girl with an optimistic approach to life. "There is something in her past which is scary but that comes only later," she quips. The team has shot eight episodes and "like every other soap, there were some teething problems but I am having a nice time," says Narayani who has worked with almost all the artistes before. Manini, Sulbha, Smita and Narayani have bonded earlier on the sets of Piya Ka Ghar and so it wasn't difficult for them to take off from where they left. Since Narayani has done a beautician's course she feels on home turf. "I have done facials and eyebrows for others so I am comfortable with the tweezers and packs," she laughs. And yes, she feels that it is possible to bond in a beauty parlour. The actress has been regularly visiting 'Khoobsooon SAB, Monday-Thursday at 9 pm.rat' Beauty Parlour at Andheri since she was a kid and is more than close to the girls in the parlour. She will soon be attending the wedding of a girl who is working there. "I know everything about them but they may not know me well," she concedes. "That's because I am a little reserved," she grins sheepishly.
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Twinkle Beauty Parlour airs on SAB, Monday-Thursday at 9 pm.
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