Not original but different serials
Amita Malik

AFTER the rivetting news, national and international, of the last two weeks, it is back to the more routine and generally mundane world of serials.

Since everyone has gone to town about two particular serials, Jassi on Sony and Karishma on Sahara, let me take them up first. Although their plots are not exactly original, as any canny TV watcher can tell you, the fact that they are different from the usual run of Indian serials is because their themes are well worked out. Their actresses (I refuse to call them actors) are of high professional standards and not dependent on beauty salons or sari designers for their charecterisation, if one can call it that. Jassi, or Jasmeet Walia in real life, carries off her geometrical and awful fringe, her bad teeth and her gaucherie with full control and obvious enjoyment. Just as Sachin Tendulkar derives his vast following partly because he visibly enjoys his cricket in addition to being a genius at it. So also the badly dressed and clumsy Jassi — let loose incredibly in a fashion house and then in its office where her female colleagues as well as some of the men both make merciless fun of her and exploit her — seems to enjoy her role whether in office or as a typical middle-class daughter of marriageable age at home. She seldom overacts for which the temptation must always be there. Indeed she lives her role, which is what adds to the viewer’s enjoyment as well. Without good acting, the serial would have flopped badly, and the central character, in a difficult non-glamorous role, leads the way in style, cleverly concealing her innate intelligence, which helps her to see through her tormentors and keep her options open.

As for Karishma, Karishma Kapoor’s major debut on the small screen has confirmed her stature as an actress of sensitivity and imagination. Her stint with top directors like Shyam Benegal has given her excellent training and experience and brought out her natural talents. In the few episodes I have seen, she has passed through a gamut of emotions, settings and ages, from scrubbing a floor as a shy young girl, to acting the tough matriarch of a difficult and scheming industrial family. While her granny glasses do part of the trick, her make-up fails to to keep pace with her age in her older sequences, which alternate so closely with her younger sequences that it shows. What, not one wrinkle?

I would, however, like to point out that for the TV columnist to view any serial properly and in its entirety is virtually impossible when they are scheduled at exactly the same time and sometimes not repeated. So if I am wary about passing firm judgements on our fast-proliferating and not always exciting serials, you know why. I would also like to repeat that quite often there are more advertisements than the serial itself and the new ploy of running a serial for four days in a week and then expecting you to catch up after a long interval is another irritant. Also off-putting is the theme music at the beginning of every serial, which is monotonously similar and lacking in musicality. And even a "different" serial like Karishma, has the same thundering sound and music effects which dog all serials. Constant suggestive sound seldom helps a serial, but silence does, which very few directors realise.

Some afterthoughts: One had no idea that specialist anchors have their specialist fans. But soon after NDTV bifurcated into English and Hindi, I started getting queries from viewers of the English channel: "Where has business specialist Chetan Sharma gone? Where has our favourite reporter Sanjay Ahirwal gone?" I had no idea until one caller lamented: "Have they vanished into the Hindi channel for ever?" Anyway, take heart, viewers. Last week I saw Chetan Sharma sometimes in the early-evening English bulletins and caught a very fleeting glance of Sanjay Ahirwal reporting. I am sure NDTV will take note of your preferences. I have often wondered why the Cadbury Quiz for schoolchildren must be shown at midnight. Am I watching a repeat or is it the usual mindless scheduling which dogs time schedules for our young viewers? Also, DD’s Hindi commentators for cricket seem to treat their commentaries like First Lessons in Cricket for moronic viewers and are overloaded with constant advice to Rahul Dravid, Tendulkar, etc. about how exactly they should have played a particular shot. This they alternate with the most obvious factual description of something viewers can clearly see for themselves. Unfortunately or fortunately, the players cannot hear their gratituous armchair advice on the field so only the viewer gets irritated. Lastly, I must make a correction and an apology to Apollo Tyres. The advertisement I liked so much and which I described two columns ago was wrongly attributed to MRF Tyres. It is actually by Apollo Tyres.