Home Alone - II

If you are thinking staying at home, after two years of hardwork at a bschool, gives you complete jurisdiction over the 20 sq ft area around the TV, you are mistaken. In the eyes of the higher authorities (read mom and dad), nothing holds greater importance than their little daughter. Even if she were going to college, a good 4 inches taller than me, and responsible for half the cases registered in our neighbourhood hospital in the last decade, she is always their “little” daughter!

Our intellect and common sense are two things we always take pride in. Whether we have it or not, we are certainly better off than Sam who sits opposite you at work and goes grocery shopping for mrs boss, or the girl you are dating who keeps telling on-off-on-off when you ask her if the indicator on your car is working fine… I cant think of a more outrageous way of emptying our preciously little brains than watching hindi tv serials! Every night for the last two months, I have been exposed to three hours of gut wrenching soaps that would make you want to trade your sister for Adolf Hitler himself, if given the opportunity!

A typical soap “woh rehne wali mehlon ki” (such a crass name!!!) has run for 1000 episodes revolving around three characters: Pari, her husband Sowmy (even men are given ladies’ names to increase TRPs!!) and her grandmom! Even Pari is fortunate enough not to have a younger sister! Sigh! An entire episode was about how Pari and her husband went out and she wanted to pluck mangoes from a tree! Didnt she hear about the special discounts at big bazar???

The cameraman and the makeup man are the most active people on the set. Hardly any job for the guy who writes the story and the screenplay.. Each dialogue is followed by a zoom on every actor in the room. The makeup man’s job is to drape the actors in shiny purple costumes that take the viewer’s attention off the actor’s face that always has the expression of an xler reading a gango question!

These soaps are somehow kinda like renting out your apartment in Bombay to 3 bachelors! Each time, one of them gets married and pushes off to greener pastures, another one comes in to take his place. Two Paris, three Sowmys and two grandmas later, the serial dint have any of its earlier cast…Little wonder that I couldn’t recognize it when I came back home after two years of MBA! “Mom, why is Pari’s hair grey? Did she grow old in just two years?” “That’s not Pari, stupid… she is now playing the role of the grandmother… because they found a better looking girl to play the role of Pari” Oh, I am the stupid one for not having figured this out! Not the director, crew and the million women watching this all over the country! Somehow this kinda sounded as though James Bond and the villain decided to swap roles after the intermission!

Neways, thank god for these serials… they provide a lot of employment to dumb and pretty people who can find nothing better to do… they keep the 40 yearold housewives glued to the TVs and lessen the burden on the MTNL fone lines…they also some youngsters like my “little” sister busy and decrease the number of hospital admissions in the vicinity…