Strong and never silent

But this emergence of women who drink, swear and wear little as heroines instead of as vamps isn’t part of a feminist crusade. Nanda, who started this trend with Tara in 1991, says that her women cannot exist without men and mostly, their lives revolve around them. One of the viewers’ favourite characters in Tara was played by Amita Nangia who gets hooked onto booze because she isn’t successful in sustaining her other fix — men. "Her character was liked even though she usually had a cigarette in one hand and a beer mug in another. She was completely white. All we did was show that normal women can also drink and smoke without being bitches. And this was a part of very careful audience targeting by us," says Nanda.

Due to Zee TV’s limited viewership then, the serial was aimed at metropolitan crowds, specially women. Navneet Nishan who played Tara, says that she was convinced that a short-haired heroinewith a mind of her own would fail. "I was dead sure that Tara wouldn’t be accepted," she says. But Tara-mania spread like wild fire and today a serial like Hasratein (Zee) — in which a wife leaves her husband to live with another married man who also leaves his family — has loyal audiences rooting for her. Shefali Chayya, now plays the lead role of Savi in the serial. She’s inundated with fan mail and also got the title of Zee Woman Of The Year. "I get letters wishing Savi the best and hoping that she gets to keep the man. A lot of people are for this woman and not against her!" explains Shefali.

Hasratein has a woman getting away with a lot of things that traditionally only a man could do — it’s a serial that looks at the world from a woman’s point of view. Other serials with high TRPs, Imtihaan, Kabhi Kabhie, Saans (STAR Plus) and Mahayagya (Sony) also cater to the tastes of city women. And liberal doses of reality are put in for a practical purpose. "If you have toget the audience back week after week, you cannot depend completely on fantasy. They have to be able to relate with what they are watching," comments Lilette Dubey who plays a tough-minded, disgruntled socialite in Kabhi Kabhie which also stars Shefali Chhaya. As Nanda says, "We show normal men and normal women on TV. There are no supermen or superwomen."The portrayal of women as bar flies who, almost regularly, get sloshed is maybe a bit of vicarious pleasure thrown in for sofa-spud housewives. Says Renuka Shahane who played the lead in Imtihaan, "I am sure these women too like the idea of letting their hair down and having fun. So they like watching all this." So after decades of male monopoly over adultery, drinking and smoking, women are moving onto the urf. Instead of crying over the sins of their husbands and sons, they are just going out and committing some of their own. Nobody seems to mind at all, so perhaps the normal, real, woman is finally here to stay. Well, at least ontelevision.