Not what happens in every home, is it?

Personal experience says it ought to take Bajaj’s hair a couple of years to grow 18-odd inches but on Kasauti… it’s been more like a few weeks. What’s he been using? Rapid (h)air deployment cream? Or just a wig, silly?

In a country where widow remarriage is not exactly encouraged, the baldness with which leading TV characters marry within a few weeks/months of their widowhood or divorce, would be alarming. What’s more, these second marriages are arranged with almost tasteless haste and the strong support of the woman’s family and her former in-laws. If we didn’t know better, we’d say they want to be rid of her, pronto. If we didn’t know the women were perfect angels, we’d say they’re cold and calculating.

Prerna’s is only the latest quick remarriage. Kkusum had barely walked out on Abhay before she was running rings around the holy fire with Siddhartha (Kkusum, Sony). Pammi ‘lost’ Dev during the ICC World Cup and now, faithful Rohan has asked to marry her, unaware Dev’s heart is still beating, keeps on repeating, Pammi I love you…! (Des Mein Nikkla Hoga Chand, Star Plus).

Here’s another conceit. Beginning with Mihir in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thhi (Star Plus), the first husband is alive but is abruptly ‘killed’ when the couple become too amorous and/or the soap needs to good cry. Also, the husband’s reappearance just as, or soon after, the woman is pledging body and soul to another, generates high voltage ‘tansion’. Did someone say Hindi TV serials are regressive and hurtling women back into the past? On the contrary, this is perhaps the most revolutionary change of the century (and never mind if it’s just turned three).

After staged deaths, illnesses are ultra chic and contrived in serials. Currently, it has taken Abhay a brain tumour (no less) to melt Kkusum’s icy contempt. Cancer is keeping Dev from snatching Pammi back into his arms. What he doesn’t know (but we do) is that if there’s a malignancy in his life it is Anu who lied to him about the illness. And the diagnosis on Pixie is cancer with six months to live. Oh dear!

Balaji Telefilms stories, like wheels, run along parallel lines. What happened in one yesterday, is being repeated in another today. Consider the top two: Kyunki… and Kahani… Both are in the middle of family weddings, both have husbands who’ve betrayed their wives (Mihir with Mandira and Ajay with Meeta), and, after Om shot Ajay, Gautam hit Karan — both in fratricidal rage.

While Ajay and Karan will survive the blows, spare a thought for Tapesh. As the bridegroom, he was seated at the podium of his wedding. We saw him gaze around absently, then his head slumps. He’s dead, shot (accidentally) by a friend of his fiancee’s family. A scene straightout of a serial except it was running on the news channels and in real life when someone dies, he stays dead.