Buniyaad - Nostalgia times

After 'Hum Log' sort of opened the era of long-running serials on Indian television, making Doordarshan much more entertaining, it was the turn of another long running serial to try and captivate users. Buniyaad, from the Sippy house, was the next major running serial to capture viewers on Doordarshan. The serial started in 1987 and ran through 1988. The serial, however, will not ring in memories for a large number of TV viewers of today, given that it first appeared more than 19 years back.
The serial was directed by Ramesh Sippy, and was written by Manohar Shyam Joshi, and let to him becoming much more popular (he was already popular through being the writer of the serial Hum Log as well). The serial had the presence of Dadamoni Ashok Kumar who anchored the show without actually playing a part in the serial. The serial starred a number of characters who became very popular:

Alok Nath - Master Haveliram: The simple and unassuming teacher, he formed the backbone of the serial
Anita Kanwar - Lajoji: The simple wife of Master Haveliram, she was his student, but soon they realized that they shared a strong bond
Dalip Tahil - Master Haveliram's elder son: Dalip Tahil has probably had the biggest movie career out of the entire cast of the serial
Soni Rajdan - Sulochana: Master Haveliram's elder daughter-in-law
Kiran Juneja - Veeravali: Haveliram's sister. Kiran Juneja became very famous after the serial. As a side note, she also married the director Ramesh Sippy.
Vijayendra Ghatge - Vrushbhan: Veeravali's love interest
Kanwaljit Singh - Satbir: Vrushbhan's illegitimate son. Kanwaljit went onto act in many other hindi serials such as Saans, Family No. 1, Dard and Siski
Abhinav Chaturvedi - Jay: Vrushbhan's legitimate son
Krutika Desai - Mangla: Jay's wife and love interest of Satbir. This was a nice challenging role for her in terms of maintaining her relationship with her husband Jay, as well as maintaining a friendship with Satbir.

Buniyaad has a special attraction for the older generation because of the capturing of a number of emotions related to partition. The serial is based around the family of Master Haveliram (a dedicated teacher) and his wife Lajoji. They have a beautiful family with 3 sons and a daughter, and when everything seems great, the disaster of partition strikes.
They are now refugees in India, having lost all their material possessions, and have to make a life for themselves now. The serial is about this life, about the refugee camp and the rise in life while trying to maintain their principles in life.

Nach Baliye 3 winner declared

And the winners are the couple of Sanjeeda Sheikh - Aamir Ali on the final held on December 22, 2007. The winning couple defeated the pair of Rakhi Sawant - Abhishek Awasthi in the final. The final is now bathed in controversy, with the losing pair of Rakhi and Abhishel having filed a police case against the channel (Star Plus) accusing the channel and the winning pair of fraud, of manipulating results and of depriving Rakhee and Abhishek of a win. One could have expected something like this to happen; for example when I told a couple of people about this police case, they were not totally surprised and expected Rakhi to be a sore loser. In fact, later I read that Salman Khan (who was the star judge for the final), had told Rakhee to go back on stage to get her trophy, but she refused to listen. If this lady continues to behave like this, her career could get severely impacted.
Overall, the performance of the dance show was good. You could see people striving to improve their chances, with the judges not being lenient, and pointing out bad performances when they saw one. The judges were Isha Koppikar, David Dhawan and Vaibhavi Merchant. David Dhawan seemed the most lenient one, as you could see by the facial reactions of both Vaibhavi and Isha when they were not satisfied with the performances at times. The show was hosted by Hussain Kuwajerwala and Tina.
So how did the participants fare overall in terms of where they reached ?

Sweta Keswani - Alexx O' Neil (Eliminated on November 17th)
Karan Patel - Amita Chandekar (Eliminated on December 15th with Jodi No. 8)
Rakhi Sawant - Abhishek Awasthi ( Runners Up )
Shakti Kapoor - Shivangi Kapoor (Quit on October 6th)
Amita Sethi - Vikas Sethi (Eliminated on October 13th)
Karan Grover - Kavita Kaushik (Eliminated on October 20th)
Sanjeeda Sheikh - Aamir Ali( Winners)
Kashmira Shah - Krishna Abishek (Eliminated on December 15th with Jodi No. 2, Second Runners Up)
Kiran Janjani - Ritu Janjani(Eliminated on September 28th)
Pooja Bedi - Hanif Hilal (Eliminated on October 27th)
Indraneil Sengupta- Barkha Bisht (Wildcard Jodi) (November 23rd) (Eliminated on December 2nd)

Some videos:

Making fun of the judges



Aamir-Sanjida



Youtube videos

Jhalak Dikhla Jaa 2 winner: Prachi Desai

So finally the results of Jhakal Dikhhla Ja 2 on Sony are out and Prachi Desai (along with choreographer Deepak Singh) are the winners. After a long contest starting on September 28, 2007, the final episode was held on December 15th and Prachi Desai (Bani of Kasam Se on Zee) won after a stunning comeback. She had been voted out on the 10th of November in a surprise, but even more surprising, was voted back in through a wild card entry on the 23rd of November (fairly controversial, but hey, the channel makes the rules). She was the favorite of some of the judges, and there is speculation that this comeback was done by the channel in order to get a favorite back.
The show was hosted by Mona Singh (winner of Jhalak Dikhla Jaa Part1) and Rohit Roy, and had a total of 12 participants (celebrities coached by some hard working choreographers). The judges were Urmila Matondkar, Shiamak Davar and Jeetendra. The participants were:
1. Sudha Chandran - Choreographer - Uma Shankar (Eliminated in Round 6 - Nov 3, 2007)
2. Prachi Desai - Choreographer - Deepak Singh (Eliminated in Round 7 - Nov 10, 2007) - Then back through a wild card and won on December 15th 2007
3. Sandhya Mridul -Choreographer - Javed Sanadi (losing finalist)
4. Sonali Kulkarni - Choreographer - Toby (Eliminated in Round 10 - Dec 1, 2007)
5. Tapur Chatterjee - Choreographer - Feroz (Eliminated in Round 3 - Oct 13, 2007)
6. Mir Ranjan Negi - Choreographer - Marisha(Eliminated in Round 11 - Dec 8, 2007) - He had a great performance, but it was marred in the end by his griping about the biases of the judges
7. Aadesh Srivastav - Choreographer - Tina (Eliminated in Round 2 - Oct 6, 2007) - He cribbed like anything about being eliminated
8. Mini Mathur - Choreographer - Hemu (Eliminated in Round 4 - Oct 20, 2007)
9. Cyrus Broacha - Choreographer - Rozita Rajput (Eliminated in Round 5 - Oct 27, 2007): Cyrus was the joker of the batch and made everyone laugh, including in the finals when he came on to do a bit of comedy and also the hosting
10. Ronit Roy - Choreographer - Nicole Alvaris (Eliminated in Round 9 - Nov 24, 2007)
11. Jay Bhanushali - Choreographer - Bindi Khare (Losing finalist)
12. Mika Singh - Choreographer - Tanushree (Eliminated in Round 8 - Nov 16, 2007): He has an ego as big as a truck, with the constant claim that it was his large number of fans who would do anything for him

Some videos from the final event:



If you want to have more videos of Jhalak Dikhlaja, then use these links:

Youtube, India Forums

Dharti Ka Veer Yodha Prithviraj Chauhan on Star Plus

Prithviraj Chauhan is a well remembered figure in Indian history. The most common stories around his revolve around these concepts:
- He was most likely the last Hindu king of Delhi, and after him, the Sultans took over
- He married a princess called Sanyogita, who was the daughter of his arch rival. He was not allowed to come to her swayamvar, and in fact, his statue was placed outside the hall. She garlanded the statue and he came and whisked her away in front of her father
- He defeated the invader, Mohammed of Ghori, and let him go; but in the next battle, he was defeated and taken prisoner. He finally killed Mohammed in captivity, when even though blind, he was able to locate the sound of Mohammed and shoot with an arrow
You can read more about Prithviraj Chauhan at this Wikipedia entry.



And now this epic take is available in a pretty good serial that appears on Star Plus on the weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) at 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM. It is made by Sagar Arts who are also the creator of older serials such as Ramayana, and have a lot of experience in making historical serials.
The serial is right now in the age of the young Prithviraj Chauhan, being played by a teenager called Rajat Tokas (a resident of Delhi who is all of 13 years old). The role of Sanyogita is played by Mughda. As the character of Prithviraj Chauhan grows older, the role will be played by Angad Bedi, the son of cricket legend Bishen Singh Bedi.
The costumes of this serial have been developed with a lot of hard work done by Nisha Sagar and Neerushaa, both of whom spent months doing research, visiting places associated with Prithviraj Chauhan and reading books on the era.
Eventually, the show the show will trace the life of Prithviraj Chauhan from birth till death, highlighting all aspects of him and his life - bravery, duty, patriotism and love. This will be presented in a lot of detail as the serial promises to be one of the most expensive serials in Indian television history.

More updates of the serial can be found in these locations: India-forums, Apnicommunity, Song

Banoo Main Teri Dulhan: Meandering

Banoo Main Teri Dulhan has caught a fair amount of user attention, getting some publicity to its lead actors: Divyanka Tripathi (Vidya) and Sharad Malhotra (Sagar) have gained a fair amount of name and fame. In addition, the character of Sindoora (Kamya Punjabi) is the most hated character of the serial; this should make Kamya happy since it is a well know character now, and she will also be more famous because of this.
The serial started on 14th August in 2006, so it has now done more than 1 year and 4 months of run-time, and seems to have taken over the 8 PM weekday slot on Zee TV. Like most other serials that feature conflicts within families, most of the story that it shows does not normally happen in real life. So for example, you have the heroine getting married to a boy who is mentally very small; she is shocked when she gets to know this, but resolves to do what she can (as expected from a Hindi serial heroine).
She is hated by the 3 sisters of the hero, known as Sindoora, Mahua and Chandra.
Over a period of time, she is able to start converting family members to her side inspite of all the machinations of the evil Sindoora who does what she can to make Vidya's life miserable. Sindoora has also no regard for her own husband, or for her own brother Sagar; all she wants to do is to get rid of Vidya in her way.
Right now, there is an additional story playing of 2 people with the same face, in whom the 2 sisters, Mahua and Chandra are interested. Vidya and Sagar (who is now healed, and is starting to warm towards Vidya) play a role in resolving this issue, with Mahua starting to warm towards Vidya.
But Sindoora still hates Vidya like anything, and the serial makers can drag the serial for as long as they want by showing her up to some new tricks.
If you want to get lots of news, videos and updates for this serial, refer to these links: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4, YouTube videos