Balika Vadhu on Colors - the entry of Farida Jalal

So far, Balika Vadhu on Colors was showing the extremely bad side of female repression, where in a twist, women in the household are in fact suppressed by the matriarch of the house herself. It is the grand-mother Kalyani who sets the agenda for everybody in the house, who decides on the limited freedom that women of the house have, and so on.
So, you have a household where widows are seen as people who have a bad fate, who are to be avoided, and who have a dark life without color. The same fate befalls Sugna, even though her grandmother deeply loves her, and ensures that Sugna does not go to her in-laws house where she would be blamed for the death of her husband. Similarly, Gehna, the new daughter-in-law should not have any independent feelings, and be totally subservient to her husband and family.
In the midst of all these backward customs and rituals, comes in Farida Jalal as the elder sister of Kalyani, who tries to make sure that things change for the better. So, Farida Jalaal learns about the customs and problems in the house and tries to make the required changes, once intervening in a dispute with a neighbor that she resolves without any force, just through persuasion. She tries to get Anandi more rights, and seems to be succeeding to some degree. In the same way, she is trying to get more rights for Gehna and Sugna, so that they do not feel stifled in the house, but she is running into a now rebellious Kalyani, who tells her a few things. As a result, Farida Jalal has now seemingly left the house.

Balika Vadhu - Sugna's torture continues

I was having a discussion with some friends about why serials such as Balika Vadhu, depicting such social problems and evils are continued to be shown, and while most people don't care about the social message and are interested in the drama of the story, there were some who cared that such injustices and tortures must still be happening to women in sections of our country, and there is nothing wrong in depicting such problems.
After the horrific death of Pratap in an encounter with dacoits, everybody shocked and cannot comprehend as to what is happening. What this also means is that Sugna is now a young widow, in a society that considers a woman to be incomplete without a man; and hence she has to bear the problems that go with it. There are many traumatic rituals that go along with being a widow, and Sugna has to go through all of them, including shunning all sorts of color, living away from the others in a separate dark room, eating frugal means and avoiding all pleasure.
The serial shows the problems that this causes, as for example, she is in pain and hence wants to undergo such a plain life, but still, she is also a human being and has desires, as shown in the episode where she is in the kitchen for getting some raw rice and sees a sweet on the stove (and sweets and other such dishes are totally banned for her). In addition, her inlaws are blaming her for being the dark cloud that caused the death of Pratap, their young son, and are not willing to let her live with them. If they blame her for the death, then it would be madness to send Sugna to live with them since then she would have to undergo torture and taunts all the time. At this time, Kalyani takes a decision that Sugna will not go, that she will not let her grand-daughter go to such a hell.

Sapna Babul Ka..Bidaa on Star Plus

Bidaai, the story of 2 siblings (one of whom is much darker than the others) and their life, is proving to be very popular with viewers. The story is revolving around the trials and tribulations of Ragini and Sadhana. Sadhana is married to Alekh Rajvansh (who is mentally abnormal); slowly Alekh, under Sadhana's loving care is getting better. Part of the agreement for the marriage between Sadhana and Alekh was that Alekh's mother, the arrogant and imperious Vasundhra Rajvansh would get her younger son Ranveer married to Sadhana's darker (and hence less appealing) sister Ragini. However, Vasundhra never really was comfortable with this arrangement and tried her level best to make sure that Ranveer would never get close to Ragini.
In the end, it was the total rebellion by her family (her husband, Indrajit; her elder son Alekh, her younger son Ranveer who now loves Ragini, and the others in her family as well). In the Rajvansh household, there are also the next generation crooked couple, Navin and Avni who have already tried to steal money out of the business and almost managed to implicate Sadhana's brother Vinu brother in a case for which the police comes to arrest them.
The situation now is that Navin and Avni are in disgrace since their attempt to steal money and blame Vinu became known. Vasundhra has finally agreed to get Ragini married to her son Ranveer, even though she knows that their social positions are very different (and for which a number of people would keep on reminding her about), she is also aware that Ragini is apparently much darker and considered not so good-looking (and that people would wonder as to why Vasundhra is getting her son married to a girl who may not be considered to so suitable for him). Now, the plans for marriage are happening, and one can be sure that there will be a lot of drama before the marriage happens.

Video of wedding shopping sequence from Youtube:



More videos from Youtube (link)

The antics of Raja Choudhary

Raja Choudhury played a very impressive role in the reality show Big Boss. He was opinionated, angry, withdrawn, aggressive, all of these emotions at the same time. His fights with Sambhavna, a running cold war with Rahul Mahajan, all of them served to spice up the serial, and kept him popular (managing never to get voted out even though he was nominated many times). In fact, his ex-wife, Television actress Shweta Tiwari has claimed that he was in fact abusive, and not a nice person, but this claim never got the prominence that she was looking for.
And now, after being very popular after the second version of Big Boss, he has started ruining the very same image. It is true that everything small or big related to a personality becomes news, but the fact is that when the person compounds this problem by being difficult, then things get even worse. So Raja Choudhury has got into multiple problems in the last few weeks, having spent time in jail for attempting to outrage the modesty of a woman, got into trouble with a eunuch, and caused problems outside the club and boutique owned by his fellow Big Boss participant, Zulfi Syed, who now wants to file a police complaint.