‘How old is Baa?’ is question that baffles me each time I catch glimpses of the quintessential Indian Soap Opera, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Now, that her son’s, son’s, son’s, son has been blessed with a son. That would put her age in the vicinity of about 150! Yet, for the past “four generations” she has shown little signs of slowing down or even, wearing down. She, in ever sense of the word, has become a monument, in an ever changing landscape of Television.
In an age when, a woman is all set to be the first citizen of India, a woman has come to helm of affairs at Pepsi Co., and a woman of Indian origin has returned from her long sojourn in Space, the hugely popular ‘Balaji serials’ go to show what are the tastes of an ordinary, average Indian woman. It is most unfortunate, that while Kiran Bedi, Arunadhiti Roy and the likes, are campaigning for the cause of Indian women, most of their peers find themselves cosying up on the sofa between 9 and 11, for their daily dose of controversies, conspiracies, trials and tribulations of the ridiculously rich.
I caught up an interview of Eakta Kapoor on Koffee with Karan last month. She was talking about how the characters in serials are such that, her viewers can, empathize with the woman and fantasize about the men. For, woman activists who are constantly complaining about how ads and beauty pageants objectify women, what do they have to say about this?
I hear with bewilderment, when I hear mother tell me how the serials these days are taking time leaps of 20 years after every 2 months. For curiosity sake, I saw an episode of Kausauti Zindagi Kii, to see how the writer envisages the country twenty years hence. I wasn’t surprised! Mr. Bajaj still sported his ‘Salt and Pepper’ hair style, rode the same old car, talked on the same old cell-phone; little had changed, except that now it was their children who took center stage and the shaky, shoddy camera-work had them in their focus, swooning to the latest Bollywood tracks.
I wish some doctor could inform, Ms. Kapoor about the nuances of Plastic Surgery. There is no way a surgery can change the skin tone (Michael Jackson is an exception!!!) or decrease your height by 4 inches. If you want to see what I’m talking about, you better catch up with how Smriti Irani has been replaced by Gautami Kapoor as Tulsi, on Kyunki. I find these serials an insult to my intelligence and to the work of those women who are fighting for the rights of their peers. But, if these serials really represent the popular tastes of Indian women, then please watch on…
In an age when, a woman is all set to be the first citizen of India, a woman has come to helm of affairs at Pepsi Co., and a woman of Indian origin has returned from her long sojourn in Space, the hugely popular ‘Balaji serials’ go to show what are the tastes of an ordinary, average Indian woman. It is most unfortunate, that while Kiran Bedi, Arunadhiti Roy and the likes, are campaigning for the cause of Indian women, most of their peers find themselves cosying up on the sofa between 9 and 11, for their daily dose of controversies, conspiracies, trials and tribulations of the ridiculously rich.
I caught up an interview of Eakta Kapoor on Koffee with Karan last month. She was talking about how the characters in serials are such that, her viewers can, empathize with the woman and fantasize about the men. For, woman activists who are constantly complaining about how ads and beauty pageants objectify women, what do they have to say about this?
I hear with bewilderment, when I hear mother tell me how the serials these days are taking time leaps of 20 years after every 2 months. For curiosity sake, I saw an episode of Kausauti Zindagi Kii, to see how the writer envisages the country twenty years hence. I wasn’t surprised! Mr. Bajaj still sported his ‘Salt and Pepper’ hair style, rode the same old car, talked on the same old cell-phone; little had changed, except that now it was their children who took center stage and the shaky, shoddy camera-work had them in their focus, swooning to the latest Bollywood tracks.
I wish some doctor could inform, Ms. Kapoor about the nuances of Plastic Surgery. There is no way a surgery can change the skin tone (Michael Jackson is an exception!!!) or decrease your height by 4 inches. If you want to see what I’m talking about, you better catch up with how Smriti Irani has been replaced by Gautami Kapoor as Tulsi, on Kyunki. I find these serials an insult to my intelligence and to the work of those women who are fighting for the rights of their peers. But, if these serials really represent the popular tastes of Indian women, then please watch on…
1 comment:
dude.. i recently got introduced to your blog and I found it quite interesting and I started to have respect for you until two minutes back when I read this blog and now I am feeling like I have been cheated and shoved down 4.5 feet under the ground, all coz I liked one person remotely who would spend time in mentioning those crappy Ekta Kapoor serials. There are so many other things you could spend time thinking and writing about.
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