Doordarshan Nostalgia: Mythology - Ramayana

The Ramayana is the most popular and holy epics in Hinduism, the story of the God who came to Earth and lived among humans in the form of a human, and who is now worshiped as epitomizing the ideals of the ideal man, in thought and action. In the 80's, as society developed, people were slowly moving away from religion and faith. TV was developing as a new media that would provide information and entertainment. And then came the serial written and directed by Ramanand Sagar called 'Ramayan' (with 78 episodes).



The serial took the epic and presented in a dramatized form. It started coming on Doordarshan Sunday Morning at 9:30 AM from January 1987 to July End 1988. India had never seen something like this serial. It ignited the religious thought in people like nothing that had been seen. Television in India was not so common then, and yet, people found a set somewhere to watch. If a neighbour had a TV, you would go there to watch, or go over to a relative's place. In smaller towns or villages, a single set would have a large number of people watching the single set.
The effect was apparent. Roads would be empty when the serial came, and woe betide a electricity board office if the light would go off; people would gather and raise slogans and threaten. At one time, it set a record for the world's most watched mythological serial. In addition, it opened the floodgates for more mythological and historical serials after that.
The serial took the whole story of the Ramayana from before the birth of the God Rama and all the way till the story of how he re-discovered his sons, Luv and Kush when they had grown up to be child warriors. This was covered through an extension of the serial called 'Uttar Ramayan', created on public demand. The serial brought about a much greater understanding of the epic in a way that no amount of reading would have brought about, and also served to highlight the values and culture embedded in the epic.
The serial also made celebrities of the main actors, who were revered as godly figures (except for Dara Singh (played the role of Hanuman) who was already famous)
* Arun Govil as Ram
* Deepika as Sita
* Sunil Lahri as Lakshman
* Arvind Trivedi as Ravan
* Vijay Arora as Indrajit
* Sameer Rajda as Shatrughna
* Mulraj Rajda as Janak
* Lalita Pawar as Manthara

Watch Videos from Ramayan on Youtube

Nostalgia: Hum Paanch

It has been said again and again that serials that have run well once before do not so well in their second innings. Many times, a serial has been very well-received earlier, and then years later, the serial makers come out with a desire to run the serial again, hoping that it will reach the same level of popularity. That is an event that does not happen, in almost all cases, the serial being introduced again does not work that well, and gets eventually withdrawn. Example of such serials are Karamchand, Hum Paanch, and a few others. There are many reasons for this, such as the choice set being limited when the serial first started appearing, but now choices are much greater. Further, why a serial becomes a hit is not exactly a well-defined science, and just because it was a hit earlier does not mean that the serial will still be a hit.
Hum Paanch started appearing on Zee TV in 1995 and ran for a couple of years, and was well appreciated. The story of a father with 5 daughters, each of them a specimen of a different kind, would make for each episode to have a new story. And to make things even more interesting, there is the photograph of the dead first wife hanging on the wall that speaks to him and only to him. No else knows about the conversation that he has with the photograph, although his second wife is very suspicious. Although the serial was a different sort of comedy, it could produce a lot of laughs when dealing with the normal travails of a middle-class family. The serial was one of the first made by the Ekta Kapoor-run Balaji Telefilms before it started specializing in saas-bahu serials.
Who were the principal characters ? Ashok Saraf plays the role of the struggling father Anand Mathur, who has a mind of his own, but it does not work much when against his daughters intentions. Priya Tendulkar played the role of his dead first wife who only speaks through her photograph. His daughters are:
- Meenakshi: The eldest, played by Vandana Pathak. She plays the role of a feminist and presents that outlook in her actions and statements.
- Radhika: The second eldest, Radhika was played by multiple people including Vidya Balan for a short while, Amita Nangia played the main part of the role.
- Sweety: The third daughter, Sweety was fascinated by Bollywood heroes and dreamed all the time about marrying them. Sweety was played by Rakhee Tandon.
- Kajal: The second youngest, she was the only who was the closest to a son. Playing a tomboy and speaking all the time about bhai-log, her presence on the serial made a huge difference. Her role was played by Bhairavi Raichura. If you needed to threaten or bully someone, then she would be the one to do so.
- Chhoti: The youngest. She would love to gossip and the role was played by Priyanka Mehra.
The role of the second wife, Bina Mathur was played by Shoma Anand; she would always side with her daughters even when Anand Mathur was fed up with something done by his daughters.
The serial was re-introduced in 2005 and was finally taken off in 2006. It never did catch on much in the second run.

Tripti goes from Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi

For so many years of the serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Tripti (Suvarna Jha) played the role of a bitter woman and then a bitter wife. A long time back, she swayed the vacillating and weak Sahil Virani into leaving his great wife Damini. Even though Damini Khanna / Virani was a devoted wife, Sahil started moving towards Tripti (who was also interested in moving to become a Virani). So, in the previous time installment of the serial (about 2 decades back), Sahil divorced Damini and married Tripti (shocking everybody in the house, but they had to accept Tripti since Sahil is the son of the house).
Over the period of the marriage, Tripti was bitter about Sahil's lack of success as compared to the stupendous success of Karan. She tried to goad Sahil to be more ambitious, but was mostly bitter. And then when Sahil met Damini again, Tripti was jealous and unsure of Sahi's intentions.
But all this pales into insignificance compared to what would happen next. Obviously, there was a need to evict Tripti from the serial, so suddenly she was shown to have a previous husband called Rishabh Malhotra; and in an increase of her bitterness, she also deviously managed to get all the property and assets signed over to her; and then she started showing her true colors. She started dictated all the things happening in the house, and behaving like an absolute horror. Part of this included taunting everybody in the house.
And then things moved fast again. A person is shown with a knife and who is moving around stealthily, and then Tripti is attacked. Even while she is recovering, she is pushed down the stairs and dies. And she leaves a statement written in blood that a Virani is responsible for her death. WHo is it ?

If you want to read regular updates and other gossip, then refer to this link.
Watch videos of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

Amber Dhara: The story of conjoined twins

This, hopefully, is a serial with a difference. For some time now, Sony has been advertising its serial about 2 twins, and as time for the serial launch came closer, details became clearer. People joined together are called 'Siamese twins', and have a difference in their lifestyle as compared to other people. Many people see such people as oddities, and hence this serial is a good attempt to try and portray them in a more realistic and detailed way; as well as some of the problems that they face.



The only hope that I have is that, in an attempt to generate more TRP's and popularity, the makers of the serial should not insert unnecessary drama and situations in their life. Already one can see such things starting to happen; after all, just because they are conjoined twins, it does not mean that they would end up in a circus; further, there is no necessity that there needs to be a strong villain like character in the serial. It is only in TV and movies are there people who are evil, in real life, most people have shades of grey and even bad people have their own sympathetic nature.
The serial started on 24th September 2007 on Sony, and shows up at 9 PM. The basic story of the serial is: The sisters share the vital organ liver and are conjoined at the hip. 20% of the liver is a part of Amber's body and the remaining 80%, a part of Dhara's body which rules out the possibility of a surgery being carried out to separate the twins without any fatality being involved in the process. The surgeon, who the twin's mother Lata consulted, acerted that if the surgery will be carried out, Amber will die. Hence, no surgery, and both the sisters remain joined, and their father left them because he did not want the responsibility of bringing up conjoined twins.
The serial gives the title roles to 2 young debuting actresses, Kashmira Irani, from Pune being Amber, and Shaguna Panigrahi, from Delhi playing the role of Dhara. These 2 youngsters had to spend a lot of time practising in order to get the concept of conjoined twins becoming real, after all, it is not easy to play a role in which you have to pretend to being joined together with another person. For example, both of them are right handers, but Dhara had to practise the role of being a left hander.
Both of them are different and unique personalities. Amber is an extrovert, friendly and ambitious, while Dhara is protective about Amber and loves her family a lot. Amber is quick in reacting, Dhara is much of a thinker and a planner. And Dhara is very intelligent.
Some of the other characters in the serial are essayed by Mona Ambegaonkar who plays the mother (Lata Shukla), Kanwarjit Paintal plays the grandfather, (Mahendra Pratap Dixit), and Shweta Gulati plays a negative role (Sonya Jaiswal). And now Milind Soman is now in the serial, playing the role of an angel.
The official website is at this URL.
Videos of Amber Dhara can be found at YouTube.

Doordarshan Nostalgia: Epic Serial - Mahabharat

After the success of Ramanand Sagar's Ramayana, it was the turn of the other great epic of India, The Mahabharat to be brought to television viewers. The series was produced by B.R.Chopra and directed by his son, Ravi Chopra. It was a spectacular success, maybe the most popular serial ever in terms of dedicated viewing. The serial had 94 episodes and ran for a length of 45 minutes for each episode, appearing on Doordarshan between 1988 and 1990. For people who know the Mahabharat as a great epic that also incorporates the Gita, the spiritual guide to all Hindus, it was as if the epic had come to life.
For many, the Mahabharat was a story that was not supposed to be kept in the house, and a story that they could relate to only with context to having read in their childhood as an 'Amar Chitra Katha' comic. Seeing it in life and blood, with real life characters was an incredible experience, and kept the immense crowds watching the serial. If you did not have a TV, then you would go to the neighbor's house to watch the serial. If you wandered out, the roads would have much less traffic than you would expect.
If you watch the serial now, having watched much more slick serials, you might think that the serial was a bit crude in terms of sound and shooting quality, but my recollection of the serial (including re-runs that happen from time to time) was that of a fast paced serial combining some good acting of these-larger-than-life characters with the weaknesses and human failings that they had. It was essentially a serial that conveyed a deep sense of what The Mahabharat was all about, the depth of human emotions such as loyalty, love, bonding, jealousy, hatred, envy, and bitterness.
Starting with the fore-fathers of the Pandavas and Kauravas and the twists and turns in their life, along with the life of that incredibly complex character known as Bheeshma; and the life and machinations of Krishna, the Supreme Being who knows what good and evil is all about, but prefers to let people do what they are doing rather than trying to make major changes, and the titanic clash between good and evil in the end that forces people to use loyalty rather than good vs evil; and one of the most doomed characters of the epic, Karna, who was steadfastly loyal out of gratitude even though he knew that he was going to be fighting against his kinsmen and against the good side; the serial presented all these in enough detail. There are few major acts of the epic that were missed out.
The serial made stars out of a number of people such as Harish Bhimani who essayed the voiceover of Samay (time), Mukesh Khanna as Bheeshma, Nitish Bharadwaj as Lord Krishna, Girja Shankar as Dhritrashtra, Puneet Issar as Duryodhana, Pankaj Dhir as Karna and Gufi Paintal as Shakuni. For more cast members, refer to this link.

Here are some video scenes from the Mahabharata serial:

Opening sequence of Mahabharat



All the major characters who are involved in the war