And she said

"The past is a metaphor for a person who continues to be my memory"

"It was a moment that lasted eternity"

THE COMING OF AGE OF BETIS AND BAHUS ON INDIAN TELEVISION

Today I want to do what every girl on Indian roads fears hearing and something my father has given up over the years trying to teach me. It’s the ear piercing, often embarrassing but joyous sound of the long drawn whistle. Stick your fingers into your mouth ladies and cheer for your own kind. Why ? If you watched last evenings telecasts of two soaps on Colours (yes, yes I may be the World Cinema doting filmmaker but I like my dose of desi melodrama) ‘Yeh Pyaar Na Hoga Kam’ (‘This Love Shall not Weaken’) and ‘Na Aaana is Des me Lado’ (‘Don’t Step into this Land, my young girl’) you’d know.

The subservient, submissive, sidelined female characters (often the underdogs of the director’s twisted plots) are speaking up and how! I have to confess that my interest in certain soaps - which I would have squirmed watching if I wasn’t living with my parents – has only been growing healthily rather than nurturing the distaste and disappointment my peer group displays for the same shows I’m so euphoric about today. I don’t blame them, after all the ‘bahu –saas’ (daughter in law and mother in law) dominated thrash that Balajai Productions churned out was enough to have my generation turn to American soaps (which of course seem worse to my parents considering their high quotient of adult humour) which have come to epitomize our lifestyle so to speak (Thank you Star World!)

When I’m joyous I often wax eloquent instead of coming to the point so back to the original topic! Today’s evening of television viewing made me stand up and clap for the silent suffering female characters who’ve been victims of humiliation in public and deprived of their rights for way too long. In the first soap that I’ve quoted a character called Rashmi, a Bengali girl who comes to Lucknow on the request of her fiancé Madhav, a Brahmin Lucknow based boy(and hence all the more reason for his parents to dislike this match), puts her foot down after having been publicly humiliated by her to be in-laws repeatedly. When the boy pleads with her to not break up their engagement, she questions his love since he seems to be helpless in the face of his tyrannical parents. And before she steps out (drums roll this is what I was amazed by) she confronts her fiance’s mother. “ You are the one who should be most ashamed”, she says ‘Being a woman you have done injustice to another. Have you not been a daughter and bride yourself once? You have insulted the rights and feelings of a woman yourself. You are not capable of giving birth therefore to a girl child because you don’t deserve one. Your family has never had and will never have a girl child ever!’, she curses the vamp and walks out with her parents (whose humiliation she hasn’t been able to digest so far leave alone hers). So no more laachar bebas ladki who is betrothed to handsome US returned ladka and has to marry him because after all she loves him. And oh! Women in love have to always sacrifice their happiness don’t they? (so preaches the great Indian soap jamboree).

Second, the Haryana based soap ‘Na Aana Is Des Mey Laado’ which claims to stands against all social injustice that is meted out to women (including female foeticide, illegal second marriages etc etc) had its once spineless beloved younger son character called Raghav almost marry a girl his mother orders him to. This despite the fact that he’s already married to Sia (the apparent protagonist who’s vowed to bring justice to this village by fighting the injustice meted out by Ammaji, the evil matriarch of Virpur but is more busy shedding tears for Raghav who she still loves and hopes will stand up for her). The ‘varmala’ (exchange of garlands) is done and it’s time for the moment that our Indian filmmakers love - ’maang me sindur’ (a ritual where the groom applies vermillion onto the bride’s forehead). The drums are rolling, the background score is heightened and low behold. The trajectory of Raghav’s fingers ends in Sia’s forehead, not the handpicked Ammaji bahu material! Woohoo! Sorry! Peeeeee peeeeee (that was the best onomatoepic sound I could write for the act of whistling out loud!!

Sia’s silent endurance is symbolic of her struggle for truth and endurance but atleast this great Gandhian trait has her man vouching for the sanctimony of their relationship and refusing to marry a second woman. Bravo! So I guess, I should make the title of this blog even longer and add ‘The great coming of age of the spineless mama’s boy’, yes he’s Indian of course :P

So friends and strangers to this blog, detest if you must the nonsensical plots of these soaps that have everyone mysteriously procrastinating logical steps, hiding the truth from their loved ones or simply sacrificing their happiness for the benefit of another character who more than often is a scheming character and thereby adding to the frustration of the viewers (my mom and I regularly take to flinging pillows on the floor when the characters or plot choose to become dumber) but please be a little kind, spare some of your good mood and appreciation for the justice that the underdogs of Indian soaps are being rewarded with like Sia or grabbing for themselves like Rashmi. It’s a triumph after all no matter how small. Meanwhile, the great Indian television jamboree continues on other channels of course (Colours should pay me for this generous PR activity I seem to be indulging in !) with unpredictable twists and untimely demise of main characters. I hope Ammaji doesn’t shoot Sia with her country made double-barrel gun in tomorrow’s episode. That will be such a waste of the lung power I’ve been investing into my newly acquired whistling style.

Peeeeee peeeeeee