Opinion Appearance and deception

You turn away from talented children and encounter their equally talented mothers (Dance India Dance Super Moms,Zee). Here,women of all shapes and sizes fling themselves about with complete abandon. The show celebrates the fact that you don’t have to a Katrina Kaif or a Deepika Padukone to be light on your feet and dance the wax off the floor (or whatever it is they use these days). For all the melodrama of winning and losing,there’s a sense of being grounded in reality about the Super Moms: here are adult women giving an arm and leg (quite literally) to be famous.

Reality is not something we accuse the daily soap operas of imitating. Just looking at them you think,uh-oh,another costume drama. For instance,consider the clothes the daughters-in-law other than Chhanchhan wear to the modern modular kitchen in their joint family home (Chhanchhan,Sony): everything from the attire to the jewellery is straight out of Jodha Akbar (Zee) or Bharat Ka Veer Putra Maharana Pratap (Sony): what if haldi stains the clothes? It beggars belief.

Twin impulses are at work here: at one level,we are being urged to suspend all disbelief when we watch such serials. At the other,we are being told that these serials are aspirational for the women who watch them. But how can you aspire to something which you cannot believe in at all?

Actually,you’re being asked to do something very different: you’re supposed to get behind that lipstick on the lips and the outrageous costumes to discover “choli ke peeche kya hai”. Now,once you get that far,you are supposed to peer into the hearts of all the characters and see what’s going on within each ventricle. And maybe then you’ll get to the real thing: in Chhanchhan,Chhanchhan’s and hubby Manav’s friends have gifted them a honyemoon and their hearts are beating wildly; but this has pierced the hearts of the other more traditional daughters-in law with envy and mother-in-law Umaben’s with spite. Now,that’s more like it: this we may understand and even identify with?

In Diya Aur Baati Hum (Star Plus),daughter-in-law Emily wants to participate in the quiz that Sandhya will sit for. This outrages the entire family,including Sandhya. How dare she even think of such a thing! There’s such a song and dance over it,you’d think the entire cast was rehearsing for Dance India Dance. Emily begs and begs husband Mohit and her ma-in-law,the dreaded Bhabho,until they relent. All this fuss over a quiz? Well,may be in traditional families,these are the kinds of battles young,educated women are fighting each day as they strive to burst out of their traditional roles— not to forget their clothes.

In Balika Vadhu (Colors),young girl Saanchi falls for Jagdish and tells her shocked family that she wants to marry him. The family almost faints: Jagdish,as you may recall is Anandi’s former husband. So,here’s a girl telling her family she wants to marry a divorced man. Of course,Anandi was a divorced woman who married Saanchi’s brother Shiv— maybe that’s how Saanchi got the idea.

Either way,viewers are being advised to not be taken in by appearances. TV characters may look like they belong to a bygone era but the kinds of obstacles they are trying to overcome and the opposition they encounter might be more real than we initially suppose. If it is,what emerges is a really scary picture of today’s India,especially for the women. You have only to watch Connected Hum Tum (Zee),which continues to track the daily lives of real ordinary women,to realise the obstacle race is very,very tough.

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com