Hindi TV Serial - Bade Ache Lagte Hain - Ram loses everything due to weather

Trust a hindi serial to keep on showing pain and adversity. In the space of 2 episodes, the serial has showed everybody in the family suffering, including even Ayesha, who got everything as a present from Ram.
The family business was running into some problems, and Mamaji was trying to identify some investors for the company, and came across a foreign couple in a restaurant who were looking to identify a family run business where the owners of the family had traditional Indian family values. Now, even though Ayesha did not have any such values, the chance to get such support from rich investors is something that everybody would like, and they get invited to dinner at home. This was something very surprising to the family members, since Ayesha had not shown any such regard, but they sit when Ayesha asks them to sit. However, Saumya is getting very irritated at the nonsense that Ayesha is speaking and finally speaks up, talking to Ayesha in a mixture of English and Hindi; this ensures that the foreign investors learn that things are not what they were thinking about, and the male guest also reveals that he knows a bit of Hindi and their conclusion is that this is not a family in which the elders are respected, and they walk out. Ayesha is very angry at this, and when she learns that the deal is not going to happen because of the fight at the dinner, she tells Saumya and the rest of the family that they need to leave. She gets the servants to pack up the stuff in the house belonging to everybody else and kick them out.
They are outside and not sure where to go, and in the meantime Natasha has phoned up the house and learnt about what has gone in the house (after speaking to a servant); so when they are trying to figure out where to go, Natasha turns up and then badly scolds Saumya about not getting in touch with her and takes them to her house over their objections. At the house, they are made welcome, and any objections they had are overcome, but they do not want to inform Ram about their problems since everybody tells them that Ram will drop everything and come here stopping his work.
On the other hand, Ram is running into some serious issues. He had got a good order, but where he was getting a tight deadline of 1 month to deliver, he was informed that the deadline was actually a week. He manages to convince his workers to do the work, by also promising them benefits from the deal, and is overall very enthused about the deal and what it means for the future. However, on the night before the delivery, the produced items were kept outside and it rained, which means the entire consignment got spoiled and he was ruined. He is very shocked, although Priya kept his hopes up. And then Vikram and Neha arrive there, ready to take him back to Bombay.

Hindi TV Serial - Geet - Hui Sabse Parai - Geet and Mann part over a misunderstanding, but things get crazy

Geet started out with a tragic story about a girl who get duped by a NRI out for her money, and who had to run away from home in order to escape the relatives who were all about forcing her to get an abortion for family honor. The story then moved into a romance, where she was attracted to her boss, and he attracted to her, and was a cute romance story (especially since the boss was a tough boss and she could act like a bumbling secretary). Their romance was however fated to go through a lot of problem, since her past caught up with her in terms of the presence of Mann's brother, Dev, being the person who had duped her and then ended up making her pregnant due to their intimacy at the time of their honeymoon.
Finally, things seemed to be looking better, even though Geet had run away from the engagement party once she caught sight of Dev and learned that he was Mann's brother; however, they met again and finally Mann, once he got to know that Dev was the person responsible for duping Geet, called the police and got both Dev and Nayantara arrested.
However, Geet started getting a bit suspicious ever since she overheard a conversation where Mann seemed to be suggesting that he would marry Geet in order to also get Dev out, and then soon after, she saw Dev out of the police station. Her anger erupts (even though Dev was out for only 2 hours in order to meet his grandmother), and she erupts in anger at Mann (even though he was in a office meeting where he was suggesting giving Geet a 51% stake in the business). Overall, they have a huge skirmish where Geet and Mann decide to separate and Geet leaves the company.
However, there is a comedy that is happening now, since Mann buys the company where Geet is now working (but they keep on having their skirmishes); but the serial is acting a bit weird since the new company seems very weird, one wonders how the company can survive.

Hindi Serial - Rishta.com on Sony - the story of people behind a marriage agency

Sony recently came out with a line-up of new serials, such as Powder, Seven, Crime Patrol, etc. One of the new serials in this line-up is called Rishta.com, and it is a humorous look at a marriage agency. The serial started on Sony on January 3, 2010, and is produced by the movie producer Yash Raj Films. The serial is directed by Rishab Seth and produced by Aditya Chopra.
The serial is about the marriage agency called Rishta.com, run by 2 very different individuals. The lady who is the main worker of the agency, Isha Mirchandani (played by Shruti Seth) is a dedicated lady who believes firmly in the institution of marriage. She believes that she is playing an important part of society by bringing people together. On the other hand, the other partner running the agency, Rohan (played by Kavi Shastri) is more of a lazy person, less interested in running the agency as a way of helping society (and hence with a different view-point than Isha). In the first episode, you get an idea of how Rohan is, when he starts to ignore his girl-friend for no reason, and she finds out about this, and leaves him.
The serial deals with the different types of people who come to the agency and how this challenges the workers in the agency (such as a 65 year old man who recently lost his wife and is now looking for a companion; another man came in and spun a story about his grand-father dying in 3 weeks and hence needing to get a new wife, somebody who will agree to marry him within a period of 3 weeks. Then there is another lady who sees her friend marrying a nice catch, and wants to get married to an even more eligible bachelor to show up her friend).
The serial, through the different characters who come to the agency for getting marriage partners, show the different type of people who live in the society, and the impact of all these people on the people in the agency.

Durgesh Nandini on Sony

Imagine making a serial based on a classic, a book by the name of 'Durgesh Nandini', written by the famous Bengali writer, Bankim Chandra Chaterjee. Based on the concept of a village girl with a heart of gold (but seemingly unsophisticated) coming into money and using her power to reform a family of arrogant people. Sounds familiar? I am sure there must have been a couple of movies made on this topic already. Even the recent movie Taxi Number 9211 was about a person being arrogant with his father's wealth, and then the father makes somebody else the trustee for the money.
Duresh Nandini is a relatively new serial, having started earlier this year and coming at 10 PM on Sony. It was interesting initially, but is now slipping down the interest scale, and seems very boring now. The same problem as faced with other serials; if you try to extend a story down many many episodes, you need to make a compromise with the quality of the script and need to keep on inventing many new happenings so that the serial can keep on continuing.


So what is the serial all about ? The Shrivastava family of Dharamadas Shrivastava are multi-millionaires and the 2 sons along with daughter-in-laws are very arrogant. They are so greedy for wealth that they cause the death of their father and illtreat their mother, wanting her to surrender the entire money to them. However, their father has left them a surprise in his will. He knows the nature of his sons, and hence decides to make the trustee of the entire property to be an unknown person, Durgesh Nandini (Rinku Ghosh), an orphan living in a village. The sons are shocked at this, and try to prevent her from knowing about this and reaching the city.
She is however very strong-willed, and wants to carry out the wishes of the late Dharamdas, who wanted her to reform the sons. At the same time, although she has an innate sneakiness, she is not as nasty as the sons and their daughter-in-laws, who will try at nothing to get her removed from the area; by placing money in her office and getting the police to raid, or trying to get her stuck in a situation where the board of the company doubts her competence, or she gets beaten up by irate employees of the company. Of course, since she is the heroine of the serial, she manages to overcome all these traps. But, in normal life, a person having seen so much treachery from people will not keep on letting them do more of such; but react harshly. Do we really have such major do-gooders in real life ?

Videos of Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin

It has been some time that this serial has been off the air, so if you are looking for some videos of this hit serial, here they are:

Google Video

Youtube

Using one's own serial for advertising

For a person not familiar with the goings-on in the media industry, this was pretty interesting in terms of strategy. In the past, on Star Plus, I have normally seen that when a new serial is about to be introduced, the buzz for the serial starts on the channel much before in terms of teasers and ads. Which is all well and fine. But, when a regular 30 minute serial is taken, which already has time cut due to ads, explanation of what happened in the serial in the past, we are left with around 20 minutes. And now, here is what Balaji Telefims did.
Balaji Telefilms makes popular teleserials appearing at prime time, at the 10 - 11 PM slot on Star Plus. It also was the producer of the recent movie called 'Shootout at Lokhandwala', with a large star cast - namely, Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Suniel Shetty, Arbaaz Khan, and gentleman called Tusshar Kapoor (who incidentally happens to be the brother of the main person behind Balaji Telefilms (Ekta Kapoor)).
I am not going to do a review of the movie here, but recent comments from people who have seen it was not very complimentary. So here I was watching this serial at prime time, and what do I suddenly see ? A discussion suddenly started on watching a film, and what do you observe ? One character telling the other than a good movie to see is 'Shootout at Lokhandwala', having some excellent characters and with some very good performance by Tusshar Kapoor.
Now, Ekta Kapoor is entitled to praise whom she wants in her serials, but it was very strange. Such open promotion of a movie seems almost mercenary, given that the script (if any) of the serial would have to be changed to accomodate this praise. Other people present in the room had that strange look in their face, 'How did that dialogue get in there?'. And then burst out laughing when this strange incident in the episode finally ended.
I wonder whether Star Plus was actually a party to this ? I do not know how they would benefit from such open advertising ? Somehow I ended up comparing serials that show up on the English side, and I have never seen anything like this, so maybe this is an Indian innovation. Did people notice this particular scene ?

Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki: Can they sustain interest ?

This is another serial from the Balaji Telefilms stable, as can be somewhat guessed from the fact that the name of the serial starts with 'K', an alphabet that most of Ekta Kapoor's serials start with. It appears on Star Plus at 10 PM. This is another long running serial, with a number of twists and turns in the story, and the mandatory leap in the story of 2 decades happens (I believe more than once since the lead actor came into the story when she was a young bride, and now her daughter has a adult daughter). Of course, like with other time leaps, there is no change in types of cars, no change in the house, etc.
Sometimes, when you watch these serials for some time, it is very difficult to identify with these stories. These are rich people who talk of 500 crores without much problem, who worry about people coming after them and killing their husbands and sons, who remain the same (in fact, the lead actor Parvati (Sakshi Talwar) looks younger after a time gap of 18 years (some excellent plastic surgeons ?). And then you have people who are pure evil, such as Trishna (Mita Vashisht). The funniest part is when you read in the papers about some quarrel between an actor and Ekta Kapoor, and realize that either the person will have cosmetic surgery, or will suddenly die (Imagine changing the story of the serial to get rid of a character !)
So what is the story of this serial ? There is this Agarwal family (a big joint family) that live in a house that they love, and running a business. In the past, the episodes were mainly about the hatred by Pallavi (Achint Kaur) towards the family due to a failed marriage ceremony, and then a failed marriage. She keeps on trying to poison people towards Parvati, whom she detests.
Once these episodes were over, we have the spectacle of Om (the first son of the family and Parvati's husband) dying in a flood, and realizing that Om was also married to Trishna (the shock of knowing that the saintly Om was cheating on his first wife).
This is where the drama increased. Trishna was married off to Kamal (Ali Asgar) by Parvati, not realizing that here was another lady who wanted to take her revenge. She gets her revenge by getting Om and Krishna killed and eventually getting Parvati blamed by everybody (including elders and her own daughter who is suddenly shown in a negative light). In the meantime, Parvati marries Suyesh Mehra (Mohnish Behl) to get some money back, and then suspects him of killing Om.
After being successfully blamed by Trishna, Parvati goes to jail, supposedly dies and then re-emerges 18 years later as the rich and modern (and arrogant) Janaki Devi (with exactly the same face as Parvati). In these 18 years, Trishna has taken control over the entire house, and made everybody dependent and beholden to her. So now Janaki has to take her revenge on Trishna, her family members (who did not back her) as well as her daughter who believed her to be responsible for Om's death. In addition, Parvati / Janaki has to save her grand-children from the terror of Trishna. Right now, the story gets interesting from time to time, but the temptation to drag the serial is intense, and many times you wish for the serial to move on.
This is advertised as Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani, but I would not know a single household outside of movies where such things happen. This could be more appropriately titled as Kisi Aur Ghar ki Kahani.

An excellent serial of earlier: Khaandan

I was just reminscing of serials from an earlier age, when Doordarshan was the only channel available, and we used to wait for our favourite serials to appear on TV. In the current age of a massive number of family dramas and saas-bahu serials, and my favourite type (joke, I don't really like them), 2 mega-rich families colliding with each other, I remember a serial from an earlier age.
I am talking about a serial called Khaandan. It starred a number of characters such as Neena Gupta, Dr. Shreeram Lagoo, Mohan Bhandari, Jayant Kriplani, and so on. I wonder how many people remember this serial, but I was an avid watcher when it came. Of course, this must have been 20 years back now, and I have never seen a re-run of this serial, so the memory is a bit foggy.
I did a bit of searching as well, but never did find anything substantial, so will have to mostly depend on my memory for what I write. From what I remember, it was about big business, and about the ambitions and drive of the family members. The plot goes through various twists and turns, but then a tragedy strikes, and at a crunch time, Jayant Kriplani, who is the outside in family, supports them with the shares he has.
The plus point of this serial, besides the fact that it was probably the first one of its time, was the fact that you could see the serial moving with a decent speed (so much unlike today's serial, where anything will be done to extend the life of the serial). In addition, you could feel a sense of realism in terms of the inter-actions of the characters with each other, with all of them having their shades of grey, and not pure good or evil. And of course, the biggest plus point was that the serial, having become successful, moved to a point where you could see the serial terminate.
I wonder if anyone by any chance, has a set of CD's / VHS tapes / DVD's of this serial? I know a fair amount of people who would like to see this serial again.