Telly needed Jassi Jaisi Koi...

WHAT relief! After ages, the small screen has a character whose appeal doesn't get buried in yards of silken or chiffon finery. A head whose crowning glory is not a mop of streaked or permed tresses lined with a designer sindoor or bindi but a Sadhna-cut, pony-tailed simplicity. A face that stands, not on a bejewelled, mangalsutra-clad neck, but competent, no-frills shoulders.

The countenance that has lately caught the imagination of middle class India is a sharp contrast to the gold-laden, business-class Parvati bhabhi, Kkusum didi or Prerana bhauji. It is a glitter-free, bespectacled middle-class Punjabi kudi with a common enough name, Jasmeet Walia, alias Jassi. But this ordinary-sounding character has been displaying extraordinary spunk and grit in dealing with workplace intrigues and conspiracies in the serial Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin.

With her Elisa Doolittle act, this plain Jane is all set to become the My Fair Lady of the tube, which has been offering little else than overstretched saas-bahu feuds, senseless bari bhabhi-chhoti bhabhi power games and unrealistic spouse-swapping escapades. In many ways she scores over other small-screen divas, proving that Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin. Here are 10 reasons to fall in love with her:

Jassi comes like a breath of fresh air at a time when serials are teeming with diamond-dripping or tear-dripping bahus and bhabhis. With her girlish giggles and clumsy gestures she knocks off not only flowerpots and files but also the stereotypes. She doesn't flaunt layers of gold but hides a heart of gold. When the going gets tough, this heroine doesn't weep and whine. She uses her wits and brains to sparkle and shine.

Her lack of a designer wardrobe and occasional dishevelled look cocks a snook at all those soap queens who wear the best of silks while chopping veggies in the kitchen and get up from bed with never a hair out place. Her unchiselled, ugly-duckling image, her childlike, braces-baring smile and casual dress sense has injected some reality bytes into soaps that’ve mostly been parading women with well-sculpted bodies, chiselled features, perfect profiles and cosmetic dentistry-assisted superficial smiles.

She stands out as a symbol of middle-class perseverance and competence in elitist corporate corridors populated by sneaky and pouty Paris, saucy and snobbish Mallikas and subversive Gulatis. The chashmish choohiya may be the butt of jokes in office and outside but she shows that it takes more than a bewitching smile, a plunging neckline, a shrinking hemline or a seductive swagger to win a boss's confidence and climb up the slippery ladder of success. The sincerity and smartness eclipsed behind her heavy-rimmed glasses make her a prospective candidate for shattering the proverbial glass ceiling of Gulmohur business house.

Her single-minded devotion to work and fierce loyalty to her boss Armaan Suri make her the envy and armaan of any corporate wanting an assistant committed to excellence and work ethics.

To any small-town girl hoping to make it big in the cut-throat corporate world, she's a source of inspiration. She lends a cutting edge to her professional image not by how well she wields the forks and knives at a business luncheon but by a sharpness of mind fed on liberal helpings of facts and information. She lives up to the dictum that a boss is as good as his secretary.

The nerves of steel that she cloaks under her oversized, gunny sack-like salwar-kameezes and the feisty spirit that rages beneath her damsel-in-distress exterior mark her out as a survivor in workplace politics. With commendable aplomb she holds her own in the face of bitchy colleagues who eavesdrop behind closed doors or snoop around after office hours. Her computer can be made to crash but not her spirits. The loss of crucial computer data can momentarily leave her flustered. But it can't get her relegated to the recycle bin of her workplace. This sloppily attired secretary may be shooed around like vermin in the posh club patronised by her stylish boss and his even more sophisticated fiance`E9. But she can't be shooed out of the collective consciousness of jealous, undercutting colleagues.

She rates low on snob value but high on moral values. She can't boast of an upper crust social standing but enjoys a high reliability quotient. She can’t throw around oodles of attitude with a haughty toss of the head or a pointed arch of the brow, a la Mallika or Pari. But she can throw disconcerting facts in the face of detractors at board meetings. And send conspiracies against her for a toss to make a mark on the boss.

She rekindles hope in fairytale endings at a time when other love stories on the tube have either turned into courtroom dramas or become sagas of sacrifice. For diehard romantics, Jassi is a character straight out of a Mills & Boon novel. Her girl-next-door freshness can make even the most hardened realists break into a smile.

She is the new face and voice of all those middle-class girls who don’t know how to cook aloo-gobhi or gol-gol rotis but can dish out success stories in their fieldof interest. Like the Jassi of Bend it like Beckham, this Jassi too embodies the dreams and aspirations of an India where girls want to make their parents proud not by how well they keep home but how well they perform outside.

She's the new woman of substance that television desperately needed. Long after Kalyani of Udaan fame faded from the small screen, Jassi has emerged as the refreshing icon that the masses can relate to. Someone who tugs at the heartstrings without overworking the tear glands or resorting to slapstick. Someone who’s travails seem real and don’t stem from imagined kitchen politics.

Here's hoping the ugly duckling will transform into a swan who retains her girlishness and doesn’t begin to resemble the reigning ranis of primetime. Three cheers to Jassi and her gang!

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