Golden moments on the screen

The awards season is upon us. The Screen-Videocon awards kicked off first this year. The bump-and-‘grand’ extravaganza had Akshay Kumar and Urmila Matondkar doing precisely controlled things with their physicality. Akshay’s flirt-till-it-hurts Jab bhi koi haseena dekhoon had a touch of irony about it. He had tied the knot just a few days earlier. Urmila’s medley was based on songs in her praise (Tum bahut khubsoorat ho, Urmila re urmila). Both items were vastly different from what the two stars usually do in their shows.

The Golden Moment of the evening was provided by the golden-throated Nightingale who paid a very rich tribute to Noorjehan. It was extremely gracious of Lataji to say that she learnt singing from Noorjehan and followed the senior singer’s footsteps. This lavish compliment is true only to an extent. In the beginning composers who were fixated on the throaty quality of singing did ask Lataji to sing in Noorjehan’s style. But our Nightingale came into her own within two years of singing stardom.

Just a day before Shabana Azmi in short hair, gave that brilliant speech on stage about that ageless lady named Screen, she was seen with smooth long flowing tresses in the inaugural episode of her eagerly awaited television debut on the soap Anupama. What can we say about Shabana on the small screen? She fills belly of the telly with her presence, specially since the supporting cast comprises of the usual television faces like Ram Mohan, Sulabha Arya and Rishab Shukla who plays Shabana’s husband. Shabana plays a Sachin Tendulkar among middle-class housewives. In the first episode itself she ticks off her mother-in-law for suggesting that the granddaughter of the family doesn’t need to go abroad for higher studies. "What would she do with so much education? We should be thinking of getting her married now," the old lady protested.

Now, can anyone say something so regressive without getting ticked off by Shabana Azmi? In Shyam Benegal’s feature film Hari Bhari, Shabana is seen fighting a similar battle of gender equation on behalf of her daughter. With her larger-than-life image of the woman’s right activist it requires more than the skills at the disposal of a routine soap director to keep Shabana in character on the small screen.

In B4U’s Thodisi Khushi Thodasa Ghum, Sumeet Saigal is the boy ‘nixed’-door who wants to marry the rich girl in his life. The girl’s father taunts him about his auqaat and says, "Ask my daughter if she really wants to marry you?". Aha, old trick. If Sumeet had seen films like Dhadkan he would know that rich Papas put up their hapless daughters to rebuff the man they love. If Sumeet was cine-savvy he would have hidden behind the door and seen his sweetheart sobbing and rebuking her smug dad for his wily ways. Then he wouldn’t be heading to the city to become rich, a la Sunil Shetty in Dhadkan.

The serial Arth has undergone an earth-shattering change. Mita Vashist is no longer playing Anup Soni’s shrewish first wife. It’s Deepshikha who’s taken over. Last week she slept through her husband’s second’s wife’s miscarriage and then yawned, "Was she really pregnant?" A more important question that she should be asking is, what am I doing in this serial? With Vashist’s, departure the role has become prop-oriented. In the, meanwhile Vanya Joshi’s character has become totally pop-oriented. She has given up her love, happiness and personal interests to become completely devoted to her paralytic father(Sudhir Pandey) who’s so bloody selfish, you want to shake him out of his inertia to remind him that children have as much of a right over their own lives as their parents. The serial raises a good question. Do parents have the right to lord over their children’s lives?


There are so many filmy serials on air you want to scream, Even the telefilms are becoming unbearably filmy. On DD2’s Director’s Cut last week Mukul Dev did a Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana in the story entitled Hare Kaanch Ki Choodiyan. He impregnated his sweetheart and perished in the call of duty leaving a very harassed papa Parikshat Sahni to face the wrath of an unforgiving Samaaj. Though we have come a long way since Aradhana the screen lovers still haven’t heard of safe sex. And the only protection they need is that of copyright infringement. Think of what would happen to these telly-pathetic creatures if filmmakers decided to sue !

Ekta Kapoor’s Kalash is about a girl who comes to appreciate her husband’s good qualities after being forced into marriage with a man of her parents’ choice. While she sulks with her good-natured husband(played by the same actor who plays Tulsi’s husband in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi the husband gets along like a house on fire with his sister-in-law. But don’t worry he isn’t going to sing any saali love songs. The saali is there as a mollifying factor while the firebrand wife gets all hot and bothered about her pregnancy. In this way Kalash reverses the Kora Kagaz equation. While the wife in Kora Kagaz seeks and finds comfort in her brother-in-law in Kalash it’s the husband who’s happy being around his sister-in-law.

In DD2’s Smriti, Bhagyashree goes under anaesthesia and comes out looking like Jaya Bhattacharya, the girl who plays Sandhya Mridul’s sister-in-law in Koshish: Ek Asha. Now, if Sharmila Tagore can change into Anooradha Patel in Kasak and Mita Vashist into Deepshikha in Arth, why can’t Bhagyashree and Jaya do a face-off? The problem is the restructured woman’s children just can’t accept their mother with a new face. I have an idea on how to keep the plot going. After 30 episodes, bring the mother back with Bhagyashree face, bachchon ki khatir.

On Zee’s Tum Pukar Lo, poor Achyut Poddar suggested to his daughter’s sister-in-law that his ailing daughter be fed with ‘tulsi’ brew rather than soup. The sister-in-law pursed her lips. "Now your daughter is married in our home. Please keep your middle-class values out of this." She could have been elite-lle more tactful. Or maybe she just doesn’t like Tulsi in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Tthi.

Subhash K Jha