The strange saga of Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii

The strange saga of Kahani Ghar Ghar Kii continues. The serial originally had as a center-piece, the goings on in the life of a joint family, with the couple of Om and Parvati Agarwal (Kiran Karmakar and Sakshi Tanwar) respectively being the main driving force behind the family.
And then some time ago, mainly due to some misunderstanding / dispute between Kiran Karmakar and Balaji's producer Ekta Kapoor, the character of Om Agarwal had to die a sudden death in the floods in Gujarat (although this was a murder done by Trishna (Mita Vashisht) due to Om marrying her when he was already married). And then Parvati had to go through a period when she was framed for the murder, and vanishes for 18 years after staging a death in the jail. She then comes back in order to get revenge, and eventually gets revenge on Trishna by getting her to commit to doing the murder in front of the police and taken to jail.
But there was never any doubt that Om was dead; after all, it has been 19-20 years since he has been apparently dead, and there was a funeral organized for him with his own body. And now he is back in the serial when they suddenly see him in Varanasi along with a wife and children. The entire Agarwal family are amazed to see him in the role of Rishab and he does not acknowledge any traces of familiarity. Current speculation is that either he had a memory lapse and built up a new family, or that his current wife is forcing him to play that role for some specific reason.
Of course, it is quite clear that Kiran Karmakar has made his peace with Ekta Kapoor, and hence is back into this prime-time (10 PM) never ending serial. As an aside, if he is indeed Om, then why is Trishna in jail ?

What's happening in Saloni Ka Safar

For the first time for a long time in Hindi Serials, I am at a loss to figure out what is happening on the Zee prime-time serial, Saat Phere - Saloni Ka Safar. At a time when Saloni has got pregnant, she suddenly starts feeling dizzy and faint.
And then the unthinkable happens. With a promise about her musical career, Saloni, whose life is all about her husband and relatives, starts misbehaving with all of them, to the extent that she speaks to her mother-in-law badly, does not attend Poojas at home, and horrors of horrors, tell Nahar as to whether they can postpone having the baby (imagine Saloni saying that she would go in for an abortion now !!). Nahar is positively disgusted with her behavior, and Saloni also starts belittling the young girl given shelter by Nahar, reminding her about her low status (something that you would not expect from Saloni).
And you always keep on wondering about how these people can never learn; all of them know that Kaveri can never reform herself, and yet they keep on overlooking all her issues. So, after getting to know that Kaveri had taken somebody else's baby and claimed it as her own, they kicked her out, and then got her back after Saloni pretty much convinced them; and now Kaveri will again try and do some mischief against Saloni.
Back to Saloni's behavior, it might be that she has been told that she is affected by a terminal disease, and that is why she is attempting to push Nahar away from her and towards that young woman. One can never understand what the motive is for characters inside Hindi serials.

Doordarshan Nostalgia: Nukkad: Streetlife

There are times when you get reminded of serials that one watched a long time ago, at a time when Doordarshan was the only channel in town and the only entertainment that you got on TV were the serials and Chitrahaar that Doordarshan would dish out.
One such very popular serial of the Doordarshan time was called 'Nukkad'. What does Nukkad mean ? It literally means the neighborhood, and was all about the characters who would live in the neighborhood or a locality (in the case of the serial, it was a locality of people that were not well-off by any means, in fact, they were poor). The idea of the serial was to show their life, and for many of us, it was a good awakening to see how people separate from us lived, what were their hopes and aspirations, and most of all, they emotions, their ambitions, and their despair.
The serial was directed by Saeed Mirza, and starred such actors such as Dilip Dhawan as Guru (Electrician), Avtar Gill as Kadar Bhai (Hotelier), Sameer Khakar as the drunkard Khopdi, Javed Khan as the barber, Pavan Malhotra as the cycle repair guy (Hari), Rama Vij as the wise teacher, Suresh Chatwal as Chotu, and many others.
So you had stories related to their everyday life and interactions, and you had stories about their attempts to do something like when Hari attempts to set a world record for the longest continuous time cycling and fails when very close, and another time when they play a cricket match and win with a shot from the most unlikely of sources.

Sa Re Ga Ma Pa finale

The finale of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa on the 13th of October, a Saturday was relatively star-less. It had just Akshay Kumar and Vidya Balan as the stars, which seems somewhat less for the finals of a major reality show. However, the show, staged live, was held in a massive location with a large crowd.
Overall, I found the show to be somewhat disappointing, it seemed to follow a set pattern, with the organizer of the show having decided that the time of the event needed to be filled in. I found only 3 things of interest in the whole show, whereby Akshay Kumar sang a song live, the show got 10 crore votes overall, and they got Maulie Dave in to sing a song.
The show started with some commentaries from the family members of the 3 finalists, Amaanat Ali, Aneek Dhar and Raja Hasan. All 3 deserve to be there, with some great overall quality of singing. In many cases, with proper orchestra and the sound room support, these folks can start singing for movies. And they waited for Akshay to arrive, since he was delayed. They had the gurus coming in style, and showcasing the progress of people in the various teams under the gurus.
So the show moved on and on, and these 3 finalists got to sing more songs wearing all manner of costumes. But eventually, they announced the results, with Amaanat coming 3rd, and then after some more song and dance, having Aneek declared as the winner. And that was it. I liked the series in terms of the quality of singing, and the encouragement offered by the gurus, with Himesh being the master at screaming and otherwise making his presence felt.

Some videos from the event: