Kyunki Saas-Bahu Ka Nahi Raha Zamaana

A 'gharelu' Gujrati bahu enthusiastically showing you around her house with a 100 watt smile, the time when the Virani’s became your next door family who gave you a generous peek into their lives. In 2000 when Ekta Kapoor launched Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi on Star Plus, we never imagined that it’s going to hypnotise the Indian folks and keep them glued for 8 long years using conspiring, heavily decked up vamps, the ‘ache ghar ki, bechari Bahu’ and the well mannered husband who married and created offsprings both in and out of wedlock, died and made a come back uncountable number of times! Along with Tulsi Virani, the mangalsutra, the sindoor style and those saaris became a rage among the majority of Indian women especially the married. After Kyunki, a battalion of Saas Bahu sagas mushroomed on the Indian TV Channels; these soaps cashing on the Indian values, love, hatred, marriages, mystery, death, struggle and songs, in short a 3 hour Commercial Hindi Movie stretched on for years and years together. Well the Indian audience went into a feeding frenzy gobbling up all these saas bahu sagas greedily. A new crop of India Telly emerged, the dramatic K Serials which bore the trademark of Ekta Kapoor and her fetish of K that she thought brought luck. The K serials became popular to the extent that they were fit to get an entry into Oxford Dictionary. For quite a long time we saw them taking away all the Star Parivaar awards, we celebrated with them festivals, we fretted with them, and we stood up as if it was a national crisis when Mihir of Kyunki died!

But somewhere down the line, we lost serials of substance. And of late the TV channels are buzzing with something called ‘Reality shows’ which is the latest hit among the audience. Reality Shows like Indian Idol, MTV Roadies, Splitsvilla, Big Boss, Junoon kuch kar dikhane ka, Nach Baliye, Chak de bache, Comedy Circus are slowly strangling the multitude of hollow Saas Bahu soaps and why not when these reality shows have elite judges, performances and all drama, but this time all real. Though it is being suspected that a lot of drama is scripted it doesn’t really affect their popularity since we looove to gossip, don’t we? Another new crop of serials is making its presence felt. Serials with substance like ‘Baalika Vadhu’ (talks of child marriage), Radha ki Betiyaan (talks of struggle of survival of a mother and 3 daughters in Mumbai), Remote Control (talks of a middle class family growing suddenly rich) and the intelligently revamped epics like Ramayan and Mahabharat.

No wonder one after other the K’s have been slowly vanishing out of the TV space. The latest buzz in the Telly world is that the mother of all Saas Bahu Sagas, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu thi is coming to an end in the first week of November. A heave of relief for those who hate K soaps and a sigh of sadness for those who still follow it religiously. But oh c’mon how many times do you think the script writers can write and rewrite the same stories this way and that way, how many times can the camera whoosh in and whoosh out at a dizzying speed?

Now that the poularity of K serials is plunging, I wonder what’s wrong with that auspicious K that Ekta cautiously prefixed her serial titles with. Well, they started the trend of multiple comebacks following multiple deaths of a character. So who knows Kyunki that is exiting now may comeback after some plastic surgeries of content and concepts! Till then let’s taste the new wave in Indian Telly, the reality shows and the non- saas bahu soaps. Kyunki, saas-bahu ka nahi raha zamaana.