Rehash of an unending saga or a last-ditch effort to revive a serial that failed miserably? Ramesh Sippy's Gaatha was taken off the air after 21 episodes and replaced by Virrudh. With the same cast and the same storyline, Virrudh was trashed as a repackaged version of Gaatha. "How is it a different serial?" scoffed critics. "It won't work," they added.But Sippy is unfazed. And the criticism just bounces off him. He freely admits that Virrudh is Gaatha - with a few changes. The difference lies not in the cast or the story, but in some technicalities. Virrudh begins where Gaatha stops. For those hooked on to Gaatha, there is a definite link. And for first-time viewers, Virrudh is a new serial with no missing links. Based on a family living in an era when the anti-British wave was at its peak, Gaatha was about the struggle for independence and human relationships. "The standard of the serial was of a very high order - writing andperformance-wise," insists Sippy.So what went wrong? The original storyline revolved around one family. Later, another family was added on, bringing in the Hindu-Muslim element. And somewhere between balancing the two families, the people around them and the Independence period, the story lost its focus. The din and clutter drowned the serial. "Given that there are so many channels and programmes, asking the audience to keep track of many different people in just one serial is not easy," says Sippy.There was also the added responsibility of tracing the history of 50 years of Independence. And this, Sippy admits, was a long and tedious process. Added to this was the fact that the serial had a one-hour slot. While this works fine for serials like X Files and LA Law, Sippy found that it wasn't suitable for an ongoing story like Gaatha."The fact that STAR is still way behind Zee and Sony as far as viewership is concerned, also reduced the response," Sippy adds . Not that he has a problem withthat. A perfectionist, Sippy opted for STAR as it gave him better picture quality, better sound and a better business deal: Sippy has been allowed to keep the rights of the serial, unlike other channels. Given these advantages and the lag time provided by election coverage, Sippy went through Gaatha with a fine toothcomb. "It needed a sharper focus. And had to be made more pacy," he explains. Once these changes were implemented, the impact was also bound to be different. Therefore, it was time for another change. "When everything was being worked on, there was no point continuing with the same serial. So we went in for a new name and a fresh beginning," says Sippy. For people who have run down Virrudh as a repackaged version of Gaatha, Sippy has just one thing to say: "It is Gaatha. If I wanted to change the whole story, then why take the same people? I would have changed the cast as well."Thus Virrudh was born. A serial that focuses on human conflict with theIndependence struggle as the backdrop. The central character, Jayashree (Manasi Joshi), is involved with a revolutionary group. She is thrown out by her in-laws on her wedding night and ends up in jail charged with the murder of her husband. Watch on.Hindu-Muslin unity is being shown through the friendship between Ram Prasad (Jayashree's father) and their neighbour Ashfaque Husain. Sippy feels he has dealt with it in an open manner. "It is about people. And there will be all kinds of people as in real life - balanced characters and extreme personalities," says Sippy.One thing Sippy is confident about is that this time the serial will work. "Among the variety of serials offered on television, something from the past is bound to make a difference," he feels. This confidence coming from the maker of Buniyaad and Sholay is hard to dismiss. Sippy is used to creating history and once again, he hopes to use the past to capture the present viewer so that Virrudh will have a better endingthan Gaatha.
