articles abt Phulwa-miscl

Let's face it, being mind-blowingly original has seldom been a desi serial's prerogative; for the most part serials rely on standard plot devices for their content.

'how many times has that been written and said? And yet serials continue to thrive in India. Shailesh Kapoor, CEO of Ormax Media Pvt. Ltd., "India's only specialist consumer research company for films, television, radio and other entertainment industries", wrote a fascinating blog post last year about the business of TV. He noted that the Indian film industry's net revenue is about 30% of the television industry's net revenue. With 600 million Cable & Satellite viewers in India and serials sometimes getting a consistent TRP of 7, meaning 42 million viewers tuning in to a serial on a daily basis ' is it a wonder that daily soaps litter the GEC space?

While heroines tend to have cute sequences when tipsy, usually sequences where only the hero is drunk tend to be of the angsty variety. It goes without saying that the hero in this case intentionally drinks heavily to drown his sorrows. The angst most often relates to a lost love, and the focus is on depicting conflicted feelings. The heroine, especially, gets the chance to reflect upon the situation because she realises she wants to be there for the hero, but she also knows that he is thinking of the girl he lost and not her.

This sequence from Phulwa (2011-) has its flaws but that matters little when an avid follower knows the storyline and is well aware of the quagmire of emotions the jodi are experiencing. In this sequence a drunk Abhay accuses Phulwa for ruining his life by marrying him by deception, which is highly ironic given that he was the first to ruin hers. He became a part of Phulwa's band of dacoits by pretending to be a petty thief though he was actually an undercover police officer. He manipulated Phulwa into falling in love with him only to then turn the tables and arrest her and her gang in a publicly humiliating manner. Phulwa manages to win in court though and gets out. Disturbed by the kind of bitter and mean person he has become, Abhay's fiance, Inspector Aarti Bajaj, decides that she will help him reflect on his life by letting Phulwa take her place during her wedding with Abhay. The betrayal is discovered only after the wedding and by then it is too late. Phulwa is perfectly placed to exact her revenge on Abhay and his family. Phulwa, however, still has lingering feelings for Shatru, the identity Abhay had adopted when with her gang. In this sequence Abhay mocks Phulwa for believing he ever loved her and explains that the deception was his duty, not as a police officer ' but as a brother: she killed his half-brother and he was avenging his murder because his father asked him to. Little does he know that his brother and father murdered Phulwa's entire family as a child and years later she only killed his brother in self-defence. The rest of the sequence, where Abhay is blurting everything he's repressed for so long, helps both Phulwa and the viewer understand that the Abhay they hate as a traitor isn't cruel by nature but misguided by circumstances. He seems to despise Phulwa because he believes she is a cold-blooded murderer, but he also suffers from self-loathing because of everything he's done.

'without all that context the sequence may come off as a bit of a disjointed mess but with months and months of watching the plot build to a crescendo there's nothing more satisfying for a viewer than an epic song sequence that gets what everyone's thinking out in the open!