Hindi TV Serial - Uttaran - Akash persuades his mother to forget revenge

The serial has taken a total turn from a month back. For a long time, the serial focused on getting Meethi to love Akash (presenting him as Vishnu), so that once they are married, the revenge for the death of Avinash at the hands of Ichcha, when Ichcha was protecting Veer. Even though Mukta was suspicious, and even managed to convince Rathore that there was something wrong about Vishnu, they were not able to convince Ichcha and Meethi of the same. In fact, the tables were turned on Mukta when it was portrayed that she was doing this to get some sort of revenge on Meethi. So the marriage happened and then it was supposed that Meethi and Vishnu had gone for their honeymoon. However, this was not as it appeared, since in fact they had gone back to her inlaws without letting Veer and Ichcha know. Once in Vishnu's house, the inlaws appeared nice but traditional, although in reality they were plotting against her.
Things got very serious when Ichcha suffered a serious accident and was on her death-bed, and they were unable to find Meethi. On the other hand, Surbhi, as Kanha's wife was providing them all the information that they needed, and then they made Meethi (unaware of the death of her mother) dance on the chauthi of her mother's death, all this as a part of her revenge. However, Rathore was on the hunt for detecting where Meethi and Vishnu were, and he managed to find them in a remote village in their haveli. By that time, Vishnu had been convinced by the love of Meethi and was no longer interested in killing her. Around this time, Rathore caught up with them and beat up Vishnu mercilessly, and then took away Meethi. Meethi had heard of the truth from Vishnu by then, and was totally shocked, and all her love seemed to have vanished.
However, things were not so clear. Vishnu's mother was very surprised at the about turn of her son, who was so dedicated to the revenge of his father, but over a period of time, she understood that her son had totally turned and was not willing to go on this quest of revenge any more, and she had to come to turns with this. At this time, the others in her family were totally shocked that she had given up her quest for revenge, also since there was the question of the marriage of Surbhi. Once Kanha had got to know the reasons for why Surbhi was married to him and how she was there as part of revenge, he sent a divorce petition to their house which was signed by Surbhi, but there was a taunt about why the same is not happening to the marriage of Meethi and Akash. What will happen next ? Will this marriage continue in these strange circumstances, where everybody is against him but Meethi is not so sure.

Hindi TV Serial - Sasural Simar Ka - Getting Jhumki to overcome all doubts

The serial is correctly following the pattern of many movies. There was a need for the bahu of the family who had died, and her death causes the family property and family business to go over to the villains. This causes the hero and heroine (who is also the sister of the bahu) to suddenly come across a girl who looks like the dead bahu. And of course, this new girl is from a totally new environment and different culture, so there are lots of chances of slip-ups, which also ensures that the serial will have a lot of chances to show a lot of drama.
So, Simar and Prem had managed to persuade Jhumki to come to the Bhardwarj family house to help all of them, and finally she agreed to do so, and also set some conditions. It was a challenge for Jhumki to learn all about Roli, about the family that she is going to live in, and about her relationships; all of this was something that Simar was trying to push into her and it is not easy for somebody to suddenly forget their basic culture, and remember everything that they were told to remember and do.
This was a big blow to the plans of Veeru and Khushi; for them, it was the death of Roli that caused all of this property to back to their name, and if Roli is living, then they have no claim on anything. So, they cannot believe that Roli is alive, and it is a bit difficult overall once you have known that somebody has died to believe that the person has come back to life, even further since this will mean that their plans are all blown out of the water. Towards this end, both Veeru and Khushi decide that they will not move out of the house although Siddharth and Prem wants to kick them out of the house - it is Mataji who stops them; and this is probably one of the first times that one of the children raised any objections to what Mataji said. They said that she keeps on stopping any action against Veeru and Khushi, and all of this can cause problems.
The rest of the family does not know that Roli is not back, instead they also believe that Roli has come back. The truth about Roli / Jhumki is known only to Prem and Simar, and for some reason, they are not telling the rest of the family about this. This is causing problems, since if Roli is back, then there is no reason for her not to resume her relationship with Sid. After all, there were such a number of problems earlier relating to Naina and others, and it is time for them to resume this relationship and have a normal husband / wife relation. However, Simar is trying hard to prevent this, since she knows that this is not Roli.
Now, there will be more problems since there were certain ways that Roli did things, and Jhumki is certainly not going to do things the same way, especially at times of pressure.

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.

Hindi TV Serial - Sasural Simar Ka - Now how to get the property back from Veeru

Things are problematic in the serial. At one time, the serial used to tom-tom family values and how the family should live, and now the sort of things that the serial is showing is more down to this world, with all the deceit and trickery that happens in the real world. So you have a promo which shows a husband sleeping with a lady who is not his wife; you have a wife wanting to separate from her husband and get married to somebody else in order to get property back, and so on. And you have a guy who knows what his sister-in-law is trying to do is to get the family property back, and he strikes out at her, wanting to convert her into a family outcast; and so on. None of these combine to become a family kind of story.
So, the first part of Roli's mission was done. She had managed to get Khushi to sign over her property, and to get her kicked out of the house. However, all this was done by Veeru since he was in love with Roli and this was a condition set by Roli (to get the property back from Khushi) in order for Veeru to pursue his love affair with Roli. So, when Veeru did all this, and managed to get the property from Khushi signed onto his name, the first step he took was to inform Khushi that she was now without any property and to throw her out of the house. This was a happy occasion for the Bhardwaj family since Khushi had tortured them for some time now, making them work as servants and humiliating them for a long time.
However, all this had happened because of Roli being able to persuade Veeru to do this, and the only way to do this was by doing what Veeru wanted; this also involved Roli signing the divorce papers with Siddharth, something that shocked the rest of the house. Most of the house did not even know the reason for Roli to do all this, and were thoroughly shocked and wanted to kick Roli out, and not treat her as part of the family anymore.
This increased when Veeru got the property in his name, since he stepped in when the rest of the family was humiliating Roli, and declared that he loved Roli, and nobody had the right to say anything against her; at which Mataji said that they would then leave the house rather than talking to Roli. On the other hand, the promos have been showing Siddharth sleeping with Naina (and one does not know whether this is a dream sequence or a reality, since this would be a shocker to Roli).

Hindi TV Serial - Saathiya - Rashi trying to create differences between Hetal and Kokila

The serial seems to be working through something similar to what happened a few weeks back, when Rashi was kicked out of the house and was taken back with great difficulty, and the same thing seems to be happening now. For some time Rashi stayed away from her mother Urmila, since it was her mother who used to do all the manipulations, and then she saw that she was not getting the same treatment as Gopi, and resumed her previous methods of trying one trick after another.
One of the reasons that Rashi was getting verbally battered in the house for her tactics was that Kokila was wise to her tactics, and Hetal would normally follow whatever Kokila recommended. So the plan hatched by Urmila was to try and separate them, such that Hetal would start to feel that she was getting ignored; and this was done by Rashi to some amount of satisfaction, whereby she was slowly stoking a feeling in Hetal about injustice being done to her due to the power of Kokila. So, there started growing some cold vibes between Hetal and Kokila, and Gopi was able to perceive some of them and do a few things so that this feeling would not increase.
But now Rashi has increased the level of her tactics, and it seems that some of these will cause her problems, especially when she got a big size laddu to the temple and had to hold the laddu for a long time causing her great distress. For her revenge, she tried to get a lot of chilli powder on Kokila (something that can really get her in trouble), but it seems that due to divine intervention, things turned the other way and all the chilli powder landed on her.
With Kinjal, a different story is brewing. Due to a statue of Kanha in her room releasing water, she is now being seen as a devi in the neighborhood, while the struggle for the lottery money in the house between Kinjal and Urmila is simmering.
And the other parallel track is about the impending coming together of Ahem and Gopi as they are getting physically closer to each other, with Gopi knowing nothing about the reality of physical relationships.

Hindi TV Serial - Saubhagyavati Bhava - The story of an abusive husband, who seems ideal outside

Abuse in a marriage is something that happens much more frequently in conservative societies, such as India or in Islamic countries of the Middle east. In such countries, the amount of freedom available to women or ladies is much lower and the husband feels that the woman is more under his control. And as a result, there is a feeling to some degree that the husband is in a superior position and can do what he wants. And when you combine this with the overall position in society such that women not working, having an overall lower stats, it can set the ground very clearly for those men who feel over-jealous of their wife.
This is such a story, and one would have seen some traces of this in a 2007 movie called 'Provoked', starring Aishwarya Rai, based on the story of an Indian lady in the United Kingdom called ' Kiranjit Ahluwalia' who was abused by her husband on a regular basis and got no support from her own family, and who finally burnt her husband to death and went through a long court case to get her freedom from the court case against her.
The story of the serial, 'Dil Se Di Dua - Saubhagyavati Bhava' is on similar lines, with a new marriage. This is supposedly an ideal marriage, with the marriage between Viraj and Jhahnvi. Viraj is seen as a polite and nice man, and thus the marriage is seen as a good marriage. However, unknown to others, and much known to Jhahnvi, Viraj is highly possessive and had a bad childhood; as a result of which, from time to time, he ill-treats Jhanvi, including physically abusing her. She is tremendous shock because of this ill-treatment and is now trying to find a way to escape.

Hindi TV Serial - Saathiya - Gopi finally recovered, and Rashi being taken back to Modi house

After some long tense moments (caused due to Gopi getting injured by a falling slab after the rescue of Rashi from the kidnappers), finally the doctors declared that Gopi is out of danger. There was all the usual drama, such as the fact that her blood group was a bit different (apparently only Urmi had that blood group, and not even Rashi, her own daughter). Urmi first refuses to give blood, and is then firmly persuaded to give her blood.
Finally, Gopi is fine, and though the doctor was worried about her going into coma, some strong words from Ahem persuaded Gopi that she needs to get better, and she did not fall into a coma. Now, there is a changed Ahem, who probably realized how much he actually loved Gopi. He cares for her, spends a lot of time in the hospital while she is recovering, show a lot of his care, and overall does a great job of portraying a concerned husband.
Finally, it is time for them to come home, and Ahem gets her discharged from the hospital and brings her home. At this time, Gopi asks Koki to forgive Rashi, something that Kokila is not really willing to do, although she has seen some signs of change in Rashi (she is mostly angry with Rashi for forever planning something cunning, mostly inspired by her mother Urmi). Rashi's husband Jigar also notices a transformation in her, especially when she asks for forgiveness from Gopi, or when she took her mother out of the hospital.
So, finally the Modi ladies go to Rashi's house and decide to bring her home, something that leaves both Rashi and Urmi very surprised and shocked. Urmi warns Rashi that this is not the end, that she will not get her true status and will need to do more drama, but Rashi is somehow finally recognizing that her mother's tactics are causing all the problems.

Hindi TV Serial - Saas Bin Sasural - Competition between Pashu and Tej, and then Tej's accident

The competition between Pashu and Tej over the past few weeks has been shown to be much more tense than in the past; ever since Tej felt that Pashu was dictating terms to him and not treating him very well. He finally decided that it would be difficult to work with Pashu any more (and Pashu was also actually being very impatient with Tej, taking all his comments with great criticism, and replying back sharply to some of these comments).
Finally, Tej decided that enough is enough, and he decided to do a business for himself, and he knew one line of business, and so decided to open a saree shop just like Pashu was running the family saree shop. He got part of the financing through his mother-in-law, something that caused some amount of distress in the Chaturvedi household, although when Tej named the shop after his later mother, that seemed to reduce the opposition to some degree.
And then the competition between the 2 brothers increased to a large degree, with both of them trying to out-compete against each other, keeping their shops open for a larger amount of time, or even offering discounts, something that the head of the family normally discouraged as a business practice. Finally Pitaji decided that this competition was getting very unhealthy and reduced the amount of time he had given to both of them to decide which one was more successful.
Finally, when the accounts were to be checked, Toasty, in order to reduce some of the conflicts in the family, gave the winning position to Pashu (and not Tej) (and this was very confusing, since the rationale did not seem to be very proper). The condition was that whoever lost would close his shop and merge it with the other one, and in the end, this win and loss was actually more confusing to both of them. Tej was very unhappy when he found what Toasty had done.
Then things turned more serious. Tej went off to Pune for some work for Pashu's shop, and then Toasty heard that the bus had gone over a cliff and everybody had died; and is now searching hospitals for any sign of Tej. A lot of tragedy for the family, but eventually I am sure that Tej will be found.

Hindi TV Serial - Geet - The property is taken away from Mann, the culprit being Dev's mother

After the entire drama with Geet's biji where finally Mann, Dev and Geet convince Biji that Mann is on the right side, and that the person coming to marry Nandini, Daman, was not a right character; things are back to normal. However, the next threat turns tricky since the promos started showing that Mann seems to have lost his whole property and his business. When Mann gets back to the city, he finds the police blocking the entry to his house and business, and he gets very angry. Before this itself, he found that the ATM cards were blocked, phones had run out of airtime, and Adi was not picking up the calls. He reaches home, and finds the police there as well, claiming that there were court orders because of which Mann could not enter his property, and it is only Geet who calms him down. And then Adi reaches and tells that Dadima is in great danger, and is in the hospital in a bad condition.
It is at the hospital that Mann finds out who is behind all this; it is the mother of Dev, Pammi. She tells Mann that she did all this because the family had always treated her like dirt, and had also treated Dev badly, and this was her revenge.
However, when Dev finds out this (and he does not find out for some time, with Adi finally telling him all the details), he gets very angry and confronts Pammi, where she appears apologetic, telling Dev that she will give everything back to Mann; she just wanted the happiness of Dev. However, this was all an act, she had no desire to give anything back, and in fact, she was very dangerous. In the meantime, Geet, followed by Mann, have left the city.
Soon, Dev, Lucky, Adi, and Nandini find out that Dadima was not really in a coma, was instead being kept sedated by a doctor being paid off by Pammi, and get the police to come in and sort out matters. Now, they all know what Pammi is upto, but by that time, Mann is in the custody of Pammi.

Hindi TV Serial - Pavitra Rishta - Vaishu finds out the truth about Dharmesh, leaves him for now

This was bound to happen, and it happened pretty quickly in the serial. For some time now, the serial has been showing Dharmesh as having a second wife (or rather, he has been married earlier to another lady called Madhur in Pune, and also has a son by her). So Vaishu is his second wife, but he carries on as if nothing has changed and when Maanav and Archana come to know, he threatens them to ensure that they do not tell Vaishali anything. However, Maanav and Archana are more scared of how Vaishu will reach if she gets to know, and further, they are not sure whether they will even be believed by Vaishu, since she does not seem to have much trust in them.
In the meantime, Dharmesh causes more trouble for Maanav, he gets him kicked out of his job as a waiter, and this causes Maanav to try and search for doing something else, along with Ajith. He is starting to find ways to get some money, including borrowing from a local guy at a 1% rate of interest per month. One is not sure where this will lead him.
In the meantime, there is severe trouble on the Vaishu and Dharmesh front, since Vaishu finds herself in the same hotel where Dharmesh is staying with his wife Madhuri (although she has already seen the son with Dharmesh, but Dharmesh denied everything). But now, when the police raid the hotel, she sees Dharmesh with Madhuri, where Dharmesh tells the police that he is with his wife Madhuri only, and now Vaishu has no further doubts on the status of Dharmesh and his marriage.
Now, Vaishu has left Dharmesh and temporarily moved in with Maanav and Archana, while Dharmesh is trying to get her back.

Hindi TV Serials - Uttaran - Tapasya, ready to play another trick, pretends to be pregnant

The viewers of the serial have been watching for a long time to see whether Tapasya will ever be shown as reformed, as somebody who can follow the right path, instead of always acting only in her best interests, and consequently being depicted in a negative mood. She has suffered for this behavior, most shockingly to her when Veer showed all her true behavior on video (including the role she played in the death of Vansh) and then kicked her out of the house, which was followed by her own father also refusing to let her enter her own house. She had to suffer, including doing a job, living in a place with very poor facilities and poor sanitation, and so on. Yet, she was finally accepted back by her parents after they saw the pitiable conditions under which she was living. And of course, none of this had any effect on the way she thinks (to a large extent because of the influence of her nani who always supported her and put all those thoughts in her mind).
The latest shocker from Tapasya comes after the marriage of Veer and Ichcha. They finally decided to get married with the active support of the parents, with only Gunwanti being somewhat hesitant for this marriage; but Gunwanti always wanted Veer to come back to living his life and would support Ichcha's marriage with Veer if that is what made him happy.
However, Nani along with Tapasya come up with a new challenge, claiming in very dramatic fashion that Tapasya is pregnant with Veer's child (although when their marriage could have been consumated is a different question). Now, this puts Gunwanti in a moral fix, since she is not sure whom she should support (another fundamental question is about when the divorce between Veer and Tapasya happened).

Hindi TV Serials - Mann Ki Awaaz Pratigya - Shakti, in a surprise marries Arushi, a mistake for sure

The serial continues to show a lot of surprises. For some time now, Pratigya has been fighting for the cause of her elder sister-in-law Kesar, who was tormented by her husband Shakti (supported by his mother and father, Sajjan Singh). Pratigya got able support from her husband Krishna, who was even ready to support Pratigya against the taunts of his own family. It was this support that kept the courage of Pratigya steady. It was when the family tried to kill Pratigya and Kesar got to know about it, that her husband and mother beat her up so badly that she lost her child and became incapable of having a baby after that.
It was then that Shakti and family decided that it was time that Shakti got married for a second time, something that Pratigya opposed since his first wife Kesar was still alive and their marriage was still alive. When asked about how Pratigya would be able to oppose, Pratigya managed to scare them by threatening them that a second marriage would result in a jail term for Shakti (since a second marriage under Hindu customs is illegal if the first marriage is still valid).
At the same time, Arushi (the sister of Pratigya) was turning against her, and when arushi's marriage was fixed to the son of the DIG, everybody was happy. However, Pratigya saw the boy with another girl, enough to raise suspicions about his intentions, and Arushi was very bitter with her about this, and totally refused to believe Pratigya. But Pratigya was determined to save her sister, and this finally resulted in the marriage being called off. Arushi was so angry that she took the highly destructive step of marrying Shakti Singh (to the huge shock of Pratigya and their parents). Now, Arushi is in the household and determined to humiliate Pratigya at any opportunity.

Hindi Serial - Sony - Godh bharai - the story of a childless couple, especially the woman

Indian society can be very cruel to those who do not fit in so easily, and a person who deserves sympathy can instead be treated with a lot of scorn. So, it seems with the concept of a married woman who has not had a child even several years after marriage, and is the case of the heroine, Aastha, of a new serial on Sony TV, called Godh Bharai. This is a serial that has recently started on Sony TV (although it was advertised for many weeks before the show, to the extent that people were sick and tired of the ad appearing on every break on the serial), started on March 8, 2010. The advertisement was depicting the concept of a lady who goes to a godh-bharai ceremony where the other ladies look at her with scorn since she is not a mother, believing her presence to be inauspicious to such a ceremony.
And when it comes her turn to felicitate the bride, she is stopped by the elders and told to leave from there, since she is a 'baanj', a barren woman. She also has to bear scorn within her own family over this; however, when she gets a checkup done, it turns out that she is fine, and most likely the problem is with her husband. And instead of taking the help of medical treatment to treat infertility, she wants to the play the sacrificial wife and hide the inability of her husband to give her a child and is willing to take the pain of being labeled a barren woman just so that her husband does not have to bear this emotional burden. The principal characters of the serial are:
Pallavi Subhash ... Aastha
Shakti Anand ... Shivam Agnihotri
Ravindra Mankani ... Ramakant Agnihotri (Shivam's father)
Mangal Kenkre ... Bhagyashree Agnihotri (Shivam's mother)

Hindi Serial - Bandini - Santu on a more aggressive nature, but her own sister gets caught

Santu returned to the home after spending her 10 years in jail (the 10 years in jail for a murder that she did not commit), and realized that the house had been divided in her absence, with a line drawn through the center. At the time of her trial, her sister Khemi was totally against her because she was convicted of the murder of Khemi's husband Arjan, and she also set a condition with DM that if DM wanted her to not abort Arjan's baby, he would not take any steps towards fighting Santu's case. Based on this request, and shocked by it, Dharamraj cut off all links with his family and business, staying in the house but no longer involved in any decisions (this was a very strange decision, and given that he is a moral decision maker, this was not something that he should have done).
Now that Santu is back, she wanted the divisions in the house to get over, and one way was to get all the house people against her and with each other; she seems to be succeeding in that. The other quest that she had was to get DM back involved in the family, and also protect the family against their own internal divisions. Part of that was to ensure that people accounted for their misdeeds and accounted for all the money that they took from the treasury, and for that, she took control of the house safe by claiming that DM had once given her a Power of Attorney. This was a side of Santu that nobody had ever seen, and they were very confused; even more so since she made it seem that she was after the money.
One of the quests for her was to find out who was trying to get rid of Toral's unborn baby by poisoning her, and it was very shocking for her when her own sister, Monghi was accused of the crime. Santu laid a trap and found out that it was Khemi (again her own sister) who was accused of the crime, and Khemi was doing it to ensure the complete rights of her own son, Krishna.

Do Hanso Ka Joda - Searching Mr. Right in Hindi Cinema

Hindi cinema has defined the concept of “Mr. Right” for many a young girl. For a very long time, heroes of popular commercial films have ruled the roost as Mr. Right. Be it Raj Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan or Shahid Kapoor-all of them have been the role model for young hearts to shape their dreams of “Mr. Right” on. Of late, Hindi serials have been putting up a strong fight, providing women with healthy alternatives of male icon who are not ‘demi-god like’ in their status and prowess, like film heroes, but more down-to-earth and believable.

Preeti of Do Hanso Ka Joda has grown up worshipping film heroes and expects her Mr. Right to be someone who will have all the qualities of all her favourite heroes. However her mother selects for her a person who is so far removed from all her hopes and aspirations that she is shattered. Suryakamal, the name itself is so ‘uncool’ to begin with. As compared to Raj, Aryan, Rishi, Suryakamal sounds dated and archaic, immediately creating in our minds the image of an old, lacklustre person. Her Suryakamal not only sounds ordinary but even has ordinary looks. His oiled and brushed hair, simple clothes, round spectacles and moustache make him stand out in a crowd but in a manner that often makes people laugh.

However as they say looks are deceptive. For despite his ordinary looks, Suryakamal is a person of extra-ordinary strength of character. He is honest, guileless, confident (in spite of his obvious lack of charm) and large-hearted. Preeti and her cousin Suman, try to make him back out of the marriage by telling him that Preeti suffers from epilepsy that the family members have wilfully hidden from him. They believe this will make Suryakamal back out of the marriage. But instead of backing out, he reaffirms his decision to marry Preeti, thereby suggesting that he is not scared of problems and difficulties and likes to meet them head on.

The beauty of Suryakamal’s character comes out when he refuses to accept dowry that Preeti’s father wants to give out of his own volition. In fact he makes Preeti’s father promise that he will not indulge in gift giving. Upon being chided by his step-mother for turning down the dowry, he politely points out that he is capable enough to provide for his family without having to resort to external help. In his actions and choice of words, he puts across an enormous depth of thought and clarity of vision. Indeed Suryakamal is representative of those many middle-class boys and men, who might not look right, dress right or even talk right; but who are made of such sterner stuff that they can easily surmount any hurdle. Do Hanso ka Joda deserves special applause for introducing such a common-yet-extraordinary protagonist to us all.