Boogie Woogie on Sony TV

Boogie Woogie is a very popular dance show on Sony TV. Launched in 1998, it is now into the 10th year, and remains very popular. Part of that has to be the enthusiasm of the hosts, film and television personalities, Naved and Ravi. The enthusiasm is infectious since the celebrity judge, Javed Jaffery (a very good dancer himself) is as involved and has been involved from the beginning.
Boogie Woogie appears on Sony on Friday & Saturdays at 8 PM. It has helped in the development of a lot of talent, and given a number of people of all ages, races and sex, the chance to exhibit their talents. Many of them have gone onto make some great careers in the field of dance.
Over a period of time, the show has done auditions in many cities, letting people get the chance to try for the show. The show has even auditioned for people in Dubai in the year 2007. The show also attracts many celebrity judges (in the past, people such as Esha Deol, Juhi Chawla, Rohit Roy, Mallika Sherawat, Govinda, Prabhudeva, Shefali Zariwala and Aadesh Srivastava have become celebrity judges).

A sample video from Boogie Woogie



You can watch more videos from Youtube at this link.

What is happening in Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki

Seems like old times. There are so many relations that things are complex. Parvati respects a step-son called Ashu, who is now a policeman (although she has no contact with his father Suyesh Mehra). Ashu in turn is in love with a lady Shivangi who in turn is the daughter of her husband OM (or rather a step-daughter of the time when he was married by fraud to another lady). These relations are difficult to grasp, and only if you are a regular follower then you can understand.
The other major character in the story is Sasha (from old time) who is now back and wants to get revenge on the Agarwal household, but who is terrified of the abilities of Parvati to win in the end. He has the support of Chotu, who was supposed to have undergone a great trauma and hence his mind had become that of a small child. He is another relative, of Mayuri (but one loses the thread of these relationships after some time). But since everything has to get reversed, even this situation turns upside down when it is revealed that Chotu is actually a former don called Ishar Nanda, and is faking this whole thing since he is in cahoots with Sasha and wants to get revenge.
He incidentally is madly in love with Shivanngi since she was the one who was earlier having an affair with him, but who actually wanted to get him arrested. He managed to escape, until he was taken in by the Agarwals. Now Paravati, Shvangi and Ashu all know the truth about Chotu, but are unwilling to tell the others (maybe they don't trust the remaining family members). And of course, to give the story some twist, in a moronic move, Om and the family elders sign the property over to Chotu (who in a sensible family would turn the property over to a person who is not of sound mind ?).
I really doubt whether the serial could get more complex, but it must be hard to keep on writing more episodes of such long running serials and still manage to make sense.

Hindi serial wives and their devotion to their husbands

One fact has always puzzled me about the way that Hindi serials present the devoted wife. She is the one who will do what she can do to protect her husband and his family, will suffer all kinds of indignities and torture, but will keep on struggling until she manages to make things right. Sometimes it may take years, but she will do thing right, for example, you have Tulsi of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Parvati of Ghar Ghar KI Kahani, Kumkum, Praachi of Kayamath, Saloni of Saath Phere, the list is endless.
This is epitomized as the ideal of what the Indian woman should be like. In addition to the fact that this is a highly regressive image that many men would expect their wives to be like; there is another big flaw in this whole concept. If the wife is shown to be devoted and ready to sacrifice all, somehow she is ending up not telling her husband the truth. Implicit in this argument about saving the family and the situation is the fact that they don't tell the husband about the whole situation and end up in a case where the husband may in fact not believe them.
Also not telling the husband could be implied that either they do not consider the husband as being able to help out, or not able to handle the situation, or even otherwise not believe her. A mighty amount of trust they show towards their husbands.

Sapna Babul Ka Vidai

Sometimes you get serials that promise to be real tear-jerker. Alok Nath runs a family comprising of his wife played by Vibha Chibber (the assistant coach in movie Chak de India), his daughter Ragini (played by Parul Chauhan), and her cousin Sadhana (Sara Khan). The serial bears an uncanny resemblance to the start of the movie Vivah, although things could change later.
The serial comes on Star Plus weekdays (Monday - Thursday) at 9 PM for 30 minutes. The show seems a bit regressive, given that it currently seems to focus on parents desiring only one thing out of their daughters, that is. to get them married. In addition, there is a lot of focus on the emphasis of complexion on the ability to get married, and how groom's side can actually refuse to get their boy married just on the basis of complexion.
Ragini is in the queue to get married, but her cousin Sadhana is fair compared to the darker complexion of Ragini. To this end, Ragini's mother wants to prevent Sadhana from ever being seen when boys are seeing Ragini, or anywhere during the pre-marriage and marriage occasions (imagine depriving a cousin of the chance of taking part in the marriage festivities). And typically for a serial of this type, Sadhana is forced to emerge when the marriage of Ragini is happening at which stage, the groom's mother wants to swap the beautiful Sadhana for Ragini as the bride (imagine selecting a girl just based on complexion !). At this point thankfully, Alok Nath stands firm; although why they could not call the police when the groom's family demanded money was beyond me.
Similar to Saath Phere, this type of gender type-casting and regressive customs shown make one cringe, and certainly does not lead to any positive effect on society.