TV Soaps

Never has anything had the same effect on Indian TV audience as much as TV Soaps have. Over the years they have degenerated from being a healthy dose of masala to an overdose of rat poison. Blame it all on Ekta Kapoor for her masterful contribution to the retardation of Indian TV programming.

For me the memory of daily soaps started with the twin epic saga called "Swabhimaan" and "Shanti" which were entertaining in the initial days but saw massive decomposition in their story once they ran out of genuineness. From there on it was just dragging for the sake of dragging it on. And once Ekta Kapoor started with her K-serials it just went downhill with rampant stereotyping.

Ingredients in a TV Soap

1. One Tablespoon of Adarsh Bahu

Come rain, storm, deceit or an epidemic, the cornerstone of any joint family is the adarsh bahu who shalt not wither from her idealistic stance. If only god had given her some brains along with those 'family values' we would be saving ourselves from half the troubles.

2. Two tea spoons of the Vamp

A plotting vamp is the lifeline of the soap. If left to the adarsh bahu we would only see a drab version of a ultra-goody depiction of our daily lives. A vamp wins for 99% of the airtime and gets the best of make-up. Her plans never fail. She lives luxuriously. So if you want to play a character in your daily lives vamp is the one of die for. Thanks to TV soaps 'vamp' is now a commonly used word.

3. The never-say-die Baa

This eternal character lives up to the name literally. She just wouldn't die despite how many 20 year jumps the serial takes. 

4. The back-from-the-dead husband

Despite numerous assassination attempts and countless funerals, the husband refuses to take things dying down. Blown up cars and crashed flights dont stop him. He always finds some manner of escaping death. Cant blame him because maybe he hasnt watched the "Final Destination" trilogy.

Throw all this together and you have the ingredients ready !

Preparation

Open any Sanskrit/Hindi textbook and eenie-mynie-mo any word on any page. Thats the name you give to the lead characters in the soap - Pratigya, Sanskar, Aabha, Tulsi, Parvati, Om etc etc

Then open Bhagwad Gita or Mahabharata and choose a random set of Sanskrit slokas and play them at different moments regardless of their relevance to the context or content. 99.99% of Indians dont understand Sanskrit slokas and this number can only go up so nobody cares on what the slokas mean.

Constantly innovate by killing different people in the family and get their wives or husbands married off to somebody. This helps complicate things when the husband/wife return from the dead. Add memory loss and you have the perfect pot-boiler. Repeat till everybody has been married atleast a couple of times and the audience has lost count. 

Initially all the soaps tracked the lives of 'Gujju' families and once they were out of the Gujju jokes they turned to Rajasthani families. You will also find different types of BS thrown at you coated in sanskrit names - Raj Purohit, Vish-pind, Mahakaal dand etc etc. Those are the ones which put all this retardity at its peak! I wish that they took 20yr leaps every episode and died off in 5 episodes. 

The Garnishing

Why are they called daily soaps when all they do is mess up with sanity. After messing with mythology, some of the soaps have now moved to mess history. Case-in-point being - 'Jhansi ki rani'. A few others have decided to mess up song lyrics - Sasural genda phool, Sapna Baabul ka, Chand Chupa Baadal mein etc. Others have incorporated popular songs in them and have scarred us with the choreography.

The only benefactors of TV soaps are glycerin companies. I have seen better plays by kindergarten kids than these retarded TV soaps. But who's listening ?