Hindi TV Serial - Savitri - Savitri making her way, does some fighting for the first time ..

So the serial takes some new twists and turns. First of all, during her quest to get the arms of Rahukaal, she encounters Nagraj and pisachs near a forest. And then during the fighting, she gets the help of a lady who looks just like her mother-in-law, but who is dressed very differently and with a very different set of powers. Savitri is confused by this, but this lady is helping her in the fight against the Nagaraj and the others, along with Vikrant who is also helping her. At the temple to the Devi, she encounters the spirit of a baba who gives her a sword and tells her that she should do her duty to help the pisachs who need delivery from their curse. And then you see a major transformation in Savitri, who, wearing a sword, decides to take a new route. She starts a major fight against all the demons around her, with Nagaraj not believing what he is seeing. And then Savitri tells the Nagaraj that his power is gone, he is the one who is the curse on the demons all around him, and then she cuts off his head. And soon after, the pisachs all vanish, apparently with the curse on them having gone. She gets a ring from the old man which gives her the visions of the past, of Veer, of Damayanti, and whatever happened earlier where Rahukaal had killed Veer, and then Damayanti had killed Rahukaal and cut his bodies into different parts.
In the meantime, the lady who looked like her mother-in-law tells her that she is very confident of the abilities of Savitri, and goes off. She has already told Savitri that she is not related to her in any way, her face being similar to that of her mother-in-law is totally coincidental, and the reason that she is helping Savitri is because this will be the only way that her son, Rahu Kaal, would get his whole body back. And then she goes back to Rahu Kaal and Gulika, who are very upset to see her there, since her helping Savitri is to help get the body of Rahu Kaal back. She seems upset over what has been happening, and particularly blaming Gulika for whatever has happened to Rahukaal.
Now, when the hands are with Savitri, Gulika comes there and asks for the hands. Savitri refuses and tells Gulika that unless Rahukaal come there, she will destroy the hands. Gulika does not like this, but goes from there and then Rahukaal comes there. He also threatens her that bad things will happen to Satya unless the hands are given to him, but she tells him that unless Satya comes there, the hands are gone. And she has a sword which she tries to use on Rahukaal, but he tells her that he does not have a body (destroyed by her in the past) and hence the sword cannot hurt him. She first has to bring the parts of his body, put them together, and then only she can destroy it again.
Satya is brought back, but Rahukaal tells her that this is in a form controlled by him; is this Satya or somebody like him, or what ?

Hindi TV Serial - Savitri - Savitri learning more about where Satya is ...

Savitri is a fantasy serial that has recently started appearing on Life OK starting on the 18th of Feb 2013. The serial stars the pair of Riddhi Dogra and Yash Pandit as the main lead, starring as Savitri and Satyavan. The serial showcases the story of the love of Savitri for her husband Satya, with this love story exiting for thousands of years (or rather, the story having started thousands of years back and then resuming in another birth that has only happened recently).
Savitri and Satyavan were in love with each other in ancient times, with Rajkumari Damyanti, who is in love with her senapati, Veer. However, the evil monster, Rahukaal is also in love with her, and cannot stand that she is in love with somebody else. He tricks Veer after calling him for a battle, and kills him. However, when Damyanti learns about this, she kills Rahukaal and splits his body into 52 pieces that are scattered all over. Rahukaal's sister, Goolika, who is also powerful remains alive for this time, waiting for when Damyanti and Veer will be re-born, since this will also cause the re-emergence of Rahukaal.
Cut to recent times. It is the year 1990, and they are re-born, in the form of Savitri and Satyavan. They come into contact with each other, and fall for each other, cutting to the year 2013. Savitri gets premonitions of what is happening, and is hesitant to get married to Satyavan, but when he threatens, she finally decides to get married to him, even though she wants to maintain a distance. She is now integrated to some extent with his family, since they all accept her easily.
They go for their honeymoon to the Andaman Islands, which is pretty close to the place where Rahukaal and Goolika are now there. By this time Rahukaal has managed to come back, but with only his head, since the other pieces have to be integrated back into him, and he will need help for that. Goolika is helping him in this process, but not fully, although he is still more powerful than her, and has powers in the real world even though he has only his head.
Savitri feels something strange in the area and wants to come back, and manages to persuade Satya to come back. With their friend Dev, they are close to coming back, having made the arrangements. At the same time, there is a powerful storm, and Savitri goes to the local tribal people, who know of the legend of Damyanti and how she stopped a powerful demon, and they recognize her as the same. She tells Satya of the overall story, but he refuses to believe her, although they do start to come back. In the meantime, Rahukaal is told that he is in danger if he tries to touch Savitri, and decides to play a trick where Satya will be presumed dead, but will still be alive.
So, when Satya and Veer are going in a jeep for some formalities, Satya is kidnapped from there by Goolika, and brought to their area. Rahukaal learns this and demands access to Satya. Dev is in hospital and when he gets up, he asks for Satya but the police tell him that there was no one else there, the same thing that they told Savitri. His family finally believes that Satya is now dead, although Savitri refuses to accept this, and slowly starts getting more leads.
Rahukaal in the meantime intercepts Dev, and is unhurt by all the bullets fired at him, and tells Dev that he will be killed for the crime of touching Savitri and throws him around the place, and Dev finally dies. In the meantime, Goolika comes to Savitri and tells her that Satya will die unless she finds the various parts of Rahukaal's body that he had dispersed.

Shararat comedy serial on Star Plus

For a break from all the heavy saas-bahu serials on Indian television, it is necessary that we have comedies also playing. Of course, many times these comedies are not exactly very good. One serial that does not try too hard, and manages to keep the whole atmosphere very light is called 'Shararat'. It used to originally appear on Star Plus, and now comes on Disney India. The serial is primarily based on an English serial called Bewitched.
The story is of 3 generations of a family. A long time back, a lady called Rani Devi was very good and kind, and she was given a blessing by a sage - she would get magical powers and these powers would be handed down the generations to daughters, not to sons. However, in a slight twist, Rani Devi sneezed at the sage when the power transfer was happening and the sage modified the power to be ineffective if the lady had a cold (this would be for a period of 24 hours).
This was from a much earlier generation, and now the modern generation has these powers as well. First there is Nani (grandmother Sushma played by Farida Jalal), her daughter Radha (played by Poonam Narula Goel), her son-in-law Suraj (played by Mahesh Thakur), and the grand-daughter Jiya (played by Shruti Seth). There is a constant skirmish between Mahesh and his mother-in-law (in fact, Mahesh got to know about the magical properties of his wife and mother-in-law soon after marriage and was not so happy). Whenever his mother-in-law gets angry with him, she turns him into some creature or the other.
Then there is Shanti Saberwal (Shoma Anand), the nosy neighbor who feels that something is strange in their house, but never can seem to find out exactly what. Things keep on happening mysteriously, but she can never figure out what exactly is happening. The serial also focuses on Jiya who is a recent learner of magic, and who also uses magic in her college (where she likes Druv), while a new girl Pam seeks to be the center of attention.

A video shot from the serial:

Raavan, a different kind of serial

There is a serial on Zee, which can be truly called a serial with a difference. There have been a number of serials on air to do with mythology, with most of them being loud, very flashy costumes, big dialogues, etc, not at all subtle. But there is now a serial with a difference. Ravan attempts to tell the history that no one knows about, the story of Ravan, the embodiment of evil. The makers have tried to present his entire history, including many of his positive points. The attempt of the makers is that the serial will not glorify Ravan. It will simply give Ravan's point of view - why he abducted Rama's wife Sita - without justifying what he did. The serial will show Ravan's transformation from mahamanav (a great human being) to a mahadanav (a great demon).
“Ravan has been portrayed in a negative light so far. He is known as Sita’s kidnapper but what people don’t know is that he was a big pandit and a powerful man. His real persona has been hidden from the audience and in this show you will see him as a warrior, a real hero!” The serial will reveal little-known aspects about Ravan like the fact that he was the grandson of Brahma, that Hanuman was one of the ministers in his court who left after a misunderstanding, and that Ravana did not actually have ten heads; he actually wore a necklace of ten heads.



‘Ravan’ is shown Saturday nights at 9 PM (and started on 21:00 from 12th November 2006). Basic story starts with Ravan's mother Kekashi (Ravee Gupta) shown trying to seduce Rishi Vishrava (R K Gupta), because she wants to have a child with him. It all began with the Daitya named Sumaalee ( maternal Grand Father), Raavan’s Nana. After Sumaalee lost his kingdom the Devta’s, he was very upset and started to conspire and wanted his kingdom back at any cost.
He got a vision that if he had son’s from Vishravaa, he would have sons equal to Kuber the ruler of lanka. Sumaalee’s daughter Kaikasee, was convinced to go and entice Vishravaa into marrying her and has children from him. Kaikasee went to seek out for Vishravaa, and managed to win his love. After some time she gave birth to a 4 children. His father named him Dashgreev (ten-headed). Then born Kumbhkarn and after him their sister Shoorpankhaa. Kaikasee’s last child was Vibheeshan.
Having watched it many times, it can be gripping, and because of the previous mythological serials, I was a bit apprehensive. But to connect to the 21st century, the loud drama of the 80s’ Doordarshan presentation has been cut out. Ravan speaks human. There is no thigh-slapping, foot-stomping swearing of a bigmouth. He is younger and leaner. Rama looks like a conscientious leader not given to lengthy discourse and beatific smiles.
The serial is also raising a toast to scientific progress of the age. “The sages, like Agastya Rishi, were actually great scientists. Why speak of only Ravan’s Pushpak rath? There were nine types of aircraft in vogue then, including fighter planes. The Brahmastra itself was a missile. It is well-known that centuries later Leonardo da Vinci was influenced by military accounts in Ramayana.
An excerpt from the serial that shows the inherent nature of Rama. Rama has picked up the Brahmastra and taken aim, but Ravana has desisted from countering with an equally destructive weapon from his arsenal. “I cannot let Creation come to end,” he thinks and embraces his own death.

Producer : Gulshan Sachdeva ( Film and Shots )
Research : Om Prakash
Screenplay Writer : Umesh Chandra Upadhyay
Dialogue Writer : Vijay Pundit
Director : Ranjan Kumar Singh
Star Cast : Narendra Jha (Ravan), Divya Desai (Mandodari), Ravee Gupta (Keksi), Rajendra Gupta (Sumali)

TV show Giant Robot: Real fun for kids

I am slowly going into nostalgia mode, and may evoke some memories in people who were kids when Doordarshan was the single channel on TV, and when there was a serial called 'Giant Robot' that would come on TV. Nowadays, there are such a lot of cartoon channels, but at that time, there was this show among the few that would be coming on TV which was of interest specifically to children (along with Spiderman, and a few others). From what I recall, it used to come in the late afternoon. This is actually a very old serial, which was created in Japan in the late 60's, became a craze in the US in the 70's and then was recycled here in India by Doordarshan in the 80's. But all this does not matter really, nobody cares whether this was recycled or not. There was the thrill of watching it, and it used to get tense when you had to go somewhere (parental pressure or something else unavoidable), and how am I going to be able to miss this episode, and wait for the next episode ?
When the time would come to watch it, all other activity would cease, including playing out and being with friends (I mean, you could still be with friends, but watching the TV for this cartoon).
Now I that remember it, you would not catch anybody of this generation dead watching it. It was not glitzy, the effects were not great, animation was no big deal, and the plot was laughable, but who cares. If you really want to read in details about Giant Robot, then refer to Wikipedia.
So what was it about? It was about this boy called Johnny Sokko who, through a complicated sequence of events, came into control of a giant robot that was capable of flying, and firing a large number of different types of weapons (I remember the laser that would come out of its eyes). Why does this boy need a robot ? Well, because ever since he got control of this robot (using his watch as a controller), he became a member of a group called the Unicorn.
Unicorn in turn was fighting to save the earth from the clutches of a group called the Gargoyle (commanded by an alien emperor called Guillotine). Gargoyle has a number of members, and are responsible for creating monsters that would rampage on earth.
If you want to watch some clips of Giant Robot, then watch it on YouTube
I wonder how many people were really interested in the story of this serial? I for one primarily watched it because
- It had a large robot that could fly and do a number of destructive things
- There was usually a battle involving some monster
- It had tension, with usually the robot managing to save things in the end

If you are interested in this series, you can buy them from Amazon:

I Dream Of Jeanie - an English language classic of its time!!!

"I Dream of Jeannie" was a comedy starring Barbara Eden, Larry Hagman, Bill Daily and Hayden Rorke. The show was about the adventures of an astronaut who inadvertently became the master of a genie he discovered in a bottle during one of his missions.

I still remember it used to come in the morning ( around 10-11 slot) and in the evening (5:30-6:30 slot). One of them was a repeat telecast. I used to watch the evening show as it used to be my school time in the morning.

I Dream of Jeannie was a cute television show about Anthony Nelson, his friend Roger, his Dr. Bellows... and his Jeannie, Jeannie. A very cute show even though some episodes tended to go off track (like the one where Jeannie was watching a performance by a famous singer, I forget which one, and a lot of the episode was wasted on this guy's video clip, yes- there actually was a video clip in the episode that had nothing to do with it).

But still, most episodes stay on track. I especially love when Jeannie's sister pops up, always trying to capture Major Nelson and make him her own master. Cute and witty, there's a reason why Major Nelson dreams of Jeannie.

Barbara Eden was entertaining to watch and it was just not her looks either. If the show was on now in these times, it would be based on her trying to keep her master out of her bottle. I would still love to see if it starts again.