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Monday, October 20, 2008

Balika Vadhu on Colors - more problems

I have serious issues with the serial, Balika Vadhu. The serial takes on a social ill such as child marriage, but somehow does not convey the message that this is wrong. It is more in the nature that there are problems in the life of the girl who is getting married, but the message is very subtle. I recently came across many people who love the program, and it is gaining in popularity (the serial seems fresh, with a decent pace of movement, and the characters seem normal); however, from no one I heard anything to the extent that this serial portrays something that is wrong. This is very worrying, since overall, as the serial progresses, it could make it seem that child marriage is not illegal, and basically requires some adjustment. After all, if the grandmother were better behaved and more understanding, this would be an ideal household and no one even think about whether the child marriage is illegal.
Further, the serial depicts a society that is very tolerant of child marriage, with not even a fig leaf of any opposition by society, government or the police. It would seem like that the Government or the police have nothing to do in this society, and there are no efforts to prevent this display of child marriage. The fear is that this may be taken to mean a social sanction of the concept of child marriage.
The next problem that the serial is showing is the concept of a much elder man marrying a younger bride. The serial shows the elder brother, a widower, getting remarried (nothing wrong in that), except he seems to be marrying a girl who is half his age, and who is marrying him under duress; her parents are deep under debt and they are promised that their debt will be taken care of if they marry off their daughter, equivalent to selling off their daughter.
Now, she is married, and under a lot of stress. The serial also subtly depicts her horror at being forced into sex, where she has been forced to have sex with her much older husband (including where they show a mark on her neck, as well as her repugnance when he touches her). The serial promises to keep on showing more social evils - one can be sure that they will talk more about problems with widow remarriage, with bad treatment of women, and so on. My main issue is that the serial seems to be an effort to cash into an emotional issue, and not an attempt to convey how some of these social ills should be removed.

Videos of the serial Balika Vadhu (on Colors channel) from Youtube.

Kayamath - the 5 year transition

Kayamath is the story of Prachi, who goes through a lot of struggle in her life, eventually settling in life with Milind, after initially being fully in love with Neev (but a series of happenings causes this initial love to break apart). With her marriage to Milind, she is fully in love with Milind, but the main objective of the serial is to make her cry almost every episode (it has happened in almost every episode that there will be something that will make Prachi cry, whether that will be tears of happiness or of pain).
The biggest problem for Prachi was her rival Ayesha, who tried again and again to get Prachi out of the way and marry Milind. She was almost successful a couple of times, but each time the love between Prachi and Milind overcame these challenges, and both Milind and Prachi came together again. The last time this happened was due to Milind losing his memory, and Ayesha taking advantage of this fact in order to come close to Milind again. With a lot of tears, Prachi managed to fight her way with Milind again.
But it was the arrival of Mallika which turned things the other way. Malika, a business associate of Milind was in passionate about Milind, and managed to get rid of Prachi from the scene. In a fight, she managed to overcome Ayesha and kill her in a way that Milind would be the main accused. When Prachi found about Malika's truth, she was told that Milind would be jailed unless Prachi went away from his life; and you could guess what happened next. Prachi left after Milind was freed from jail, and then landed up in a train that got hit by a bomb blast. It seemed to Milind that Prachi was killed, instead Prachi took the shape of Panchi, the wife of a Bengali guy (Panchi was killed in the attack), and landed up at his house. The serial is now set 5 years in the future, where Panchi lives in the Bengali house, and suddenly Milind is now in the house, having saved Panchi's husbands life in a storm. What will happen next ?

Video of the killing of Ayesha on Kayamath



Video of Prachi crying again and meeting Milind again after 5 years

Friday, October 10, 2008

Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki on Star Plus - The End

Ever since it was announced that this long lasting serial, currently in its 8th year, with an extremely meandering story, is coming to an end, the serial has turned into a mish-mash of all the characters, with some of them turning good for no specific reason. Trishna had re-emerged (although she had gone to jail earlier), and soon takes over control of the house all over again (one wonders as to how she got out of jail so easily).
So suddenly Trishna sends off Parvathi to a mental institution for mental shocks, gets Om into depression, and the rest of the household under her foot. And she has never paid for killing Krishna many many years ago. Apparently the people in the ever forgiving household forgave her for killing Krishna, and maybe also because she portrayed that she got Om and Parvati out of trouble by exposing Vijay as the real killer of the 2 young adults (Tannu and her boyfriend) killed in the serial.

Parvati in Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki

And then the drama starts into the end game. Suddenly you have an extra-ordinary team coming up to help Parvati, with Aditi, Sasha (who had always hated Parvati), Pallavi (who had also hated Parvati), Ashu (a most ineffective policeman), Ishaan / Chotu (who they could never decide whether he was good or bad, but in the end show him to have turned to good), Pragati (who suddenly becomes a hot shot lawyer). In a comical last few episodes, all of them have turned up and got Parvati free from the mental institution, and then took part in a major scam to upset Trishna, get her to confess her crimes, and remove her from the election that she was contesting. The drama over the past few weeks finally ended when Trishna confessed to everything in her own room (one wonders how much people can talk aloud on their own), and has been taken away by the police.

Videos of Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii on Youtube (this link)

Last episode:

Enjoy Nautanki TV