Some of my soapy observations:
Whenever there is a bereavment in the family,all the characters sport matching white dresses that seem to have sprouted on the spot.Wonder where they procure them from so fast.
When a leading male character gifts his wife/girlfriend a saree which is still yet unopened,the very next moment the wife/girlfriend produces a matching designer blouse with her exact measurements.Telepathy at work?
The female characters of any soap opera are always dressed to the hilt at any given time but even so,whenever they have to go out to buy veggies,they have to "dress up".
A typical soap opera family almost always consists of aged grandparents,parents,aunts,uncles and their menagerie of children.The children deserve a special mention.If there are two sons,one of them will be the golden boy of the family and the other,the black sheep.If there are daughters too,the eldest is always a God fearing pious soul who tries to set an example for her younger siblings.
The daughter in-law is a very peculiar feature of any soap.There are two kinds of the species.Type One is the Ultra Pativrata Bahu,who will weep at a moment's notice,bear the insults of her in-laws,forgive any and everybody within three miles of her,leave the house with a suitcase which is always kept packed for cases like these.Type Two is the Wronged Bahu,who is always misunderstood by everyone.Even her smallest intentions are viewed with suspicion.This type of bahu usually transforms into the vamp.
The vamp(no connection to Luigi Vampa) is perhaps the most colorful and snappy characters of any soap.They wear the most outgrageous outfits and accessories and their heavy kohl lined eyes do most of the talking.They get to have the most fun,what with treating their in-laws like dust,heaping insults on anybody who is less than a vamp,take delight in harrassing the Type One Bahu and indulge their grey cells in cooking up the most ingenious schemes to turn everybody out of the house.They are usually taken down a peg or two in the end by their long suffering spouses and/or the Type One Bahu.
The characters always have a family business which is flourishing nicely till the Black Sheep (refer to point four) decides to enter into it.Then,it all goes downhill and while Black Sheep goes baa-ing all over the place,the rest of the characters tear their carefully set hair in anguish.
A soap opera house is not a house.It is Buckingham Palace's grandfather.Their houses are big enough to conduct two large scale weddings simultaneously.I always wonder,who the hell manages to keep it so spick and span at all times?The poor servants of the gargantuan household receive no mention other than being summoned to hear an earful from the Vamp.Ramu kaka is the eternal name for any servant of the house.He is almost always old,hobbling,has an unmarried daughter and a wayward drunk for a son.The Type One bahu is the one who usually bails him out.
Most of the female characters never work in any soap opera.I never did understand why.
The older characters are medical miracles.For instance,the reigning Ba of a popular serial lived for almost five hundred years.They just simply refuse to die.The rest of the soap keeps on taking generation leaps by leaps and bounds;other characters get replaced;new faces come in and they too leave after the next leap but our in house Dadaji and Dadiji stay put.They should be taken in by our cricket team.Abhi to boht centuries baaki hai mere dost.It is as if our soap opera makers have discovered some sort of a herb or tonic which preserves youth.That explains why even after the children of the lead pair have grown up and have kids of their own who in turn grow up,the parents and grandparents still look Just Married.
God save us all from these soaps.I am switching to bodywashes.
ha hahaha. this was fun! Well, for one thing, the bahus never work, which si whythey end up in situations like soaps.. i guess some wise man must have said that -idle mind-devils workshop! It always works here!
ReplyDeleteOh, and one thing I think whenever i see such stuff is that, fine, the 'vamp' gets her karma by the end of the serial(which is like never ending) but that never really justifies for all the fun time she had or the tears cried out- i mean, OK, bad comes do come eventually for the baddies but they are over so quickly that you'd rather be them than the timid, painfully irritating bahu who just knows how to weep without spoiling her make up!
hi, i think this way of showing women as showpieces (in a utopian world, where they dont have to work but just cry, more cry, laugh and dance) is nothing but crime. though these soaps seem ok to anyone at first sight they, only i repeat only promote ill feelings, lethargy, consumerism and unrealistic/illogical thinking. your views are good. but wish u used a more harsh language while attacking these soaps. i read your blogs first time today. i am rajesh from ahmedabad. looking for a good short story, for my next short movie. i am in facebook.
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