Twenty years later...That’s become the new mantra for television producers. Two rival channels, STAR and Zee, are engaged in a battle royale for television viewership, both having adopted the same strategy to rejuvenate their popular soaps and keep them on the charts as primetime favourites

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A couple of months ago, Ekta and Shobha Kapoor started the trend with Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KSBKBT) taking a leap into the future over the space of a single weekend. Zee followed with Amanant and Choti Maa. The former took a 20 year jump forward while the latter raced ahead by seven years before going back into a long flashback. It’s interesting that producers are stepping on the time machine, relying on the next generation to take the story forward considering that serials in the past that abruptly switched track half-way through, had only succeeded in alienating their loyalists.

Manish Goswami who went in for a look and a content change half-way through Daraar and Parampara because "the story demanded it", admits that the move didn’t boost the ratings despite having a very strong script. "For over a year viewers had been seeing the same faces and bonded with them. It took them a while to connect with the children. It took 8-10 episodes for TRPs to start picking up again and for the serials to regain their positions on the charts," the producer confesses.
Which makes one wonder what prompted Ekta and Shobha Kapoor to take the gamble and risk their numero uno project? According to Rajesh Joshi, the script-writer of KSBKBT, the change didn’t happen overnight. It was planned during creative discussions with Ekta over a period of months. The problem with daily soaps, he points out, is that after a point the story begins to stagnate. And after 350 episodes they realised that it was time to move forward. "Besides, we had to justify the title and we could do that only with Tulsi becoming a saas herself. Being confronted with situations that Savita had once faced and being urged by her mother-in-law not to let what happened in the past cloud her response when considering her daughter’s future. The differences in their perceptions will once again bring the bahu in direct conflict with the saas . And with Payal now on her way to becoming Shobha’s mother-in-law, we felt we had all the ingredients to brew a concoction that would keep viewers hooked," he reasons.

The ploy seems to be working with TRPs going up appreciably after the new twist in the familiar tale. And that was perhaps one of the reasons Zee waved off Sapna Bhattacharya’s plans of winding up her four-year-old soap and instead gave Amanat ,a 52-episodes extension.

In the new look Amanat the focus has shifted from Lala Lahori Ram’s seven daughters to Santosh’s two sons--Sanskar and Kapil. Three more of Lahori’s girls are still around. "But there will be no more marriages," the producer reveals.

There’ll be a couple of shaadis in KSBKBT though there also the spotlight has been turned on Tulsi’s elder son, Gautam, an NRI brat, who has little respect for Indian culture and family values and cannot forgive Tulsi for giving him away in his childhood to his uncle and aunt. In Amanat Sanskar is the boy who’s lost touch with his roots while Kapil is the son who’s been adopted and is resentful for having to give up not only his room but his mother too. Pooja Madan who plays their mother, Santosh however is quick to point out that despite these striking similarities in the storylines, there are really no comparisons between the two serials. "Tulsi’s taken charge of her son who’s grown up wayward while all our kids are really very well-bred," she argues.

Vaishnavi who plays the title role in Choti Maa is also very categorical that her serial is nothing like the other two. For one, she points out, that Choti Maa is a remake of a South serial and the seven-year-jump was always part of the script. And this was followed by a flashback that took the story back by 10 years. "Even after the seven-year leap ahead, I’m no more than 35 so my appearance, apart from my hair-style, hasn’t changed all that much. I’m only wearing reading glasses. Even Raghu, my husband, has only grown a moustache and Shyam, his friend, has gelled his hair. The real change will come when my step-daughter, Koyna gets married and has a child of her own. At one point in the serial I’ll be playing a 52-year-old grandmom and that’ll be the real challenge," asserts the actress who played both mother and daughter in Chandra Behl afternoon serial Chingari. For the mother’s role Vaishnavi had got herself a Mother India kind of get-up, complete with a white wig. "I’d even started walking and thinking like an old women. I guess, I have a maturity that goes beyond my years because the response to the mother was better than that to the daughter," she says proudly.

It’s revealing that neither Pooja Madan nor Smriti Malhotra-Irani who plays Tulsi have chosen to put chalk in their hair and paint wrinkles on their faces even though they must logically be on the other side of 40 now. In fact, they look remarkably young for 40-year-olds but as Rajesh Joshi points out, "Business tycoons have the money to maintain their looks so you don’t expect the Virani bahus to look drab and elderly." Which is perhaps why when Smriti apprehensive of whether she’d be able to carry off her new responsibility, tentatively suggested to Ekta that she put whitener in her hair, her suggestion was immediately vetoed. "Ekta thought that I should convey the increasing years through my wardrobe, dialogue delivery, body language and my performance," Smriti recalls.

So she rolled her flowing tresses into a neat bun, opted for saris in pastel shades, started walking and talking slowly and would recall her moments with her own six-month-old son every time she came face-to-face with her reel-life children two of whom are her age and one older than her. "Even my relationship with my saas has changed, if you notice. There’s a degree of comfort between us now that comes from knowing and belonging. No matter how much we may still disagree on certain issues, there’s a bond between us now. We’ve become friends," she laughs.

The dada’s made an exit from KSBKBT but Ba, Savita, Mansooq, his brothers, sons and all the other bahus are still very much a part of the family drama. Even Mihir has returned with a new face (Inder Kumar’s) and Mandira will be staging a comeback some time in the future. "It’s important to retain the old characters and their importance in the serial," says Vinod Ranganathan, the script-writer of Swabhimaan. Though his serial didn’t take a leap forward into the future, after 200 odd episodes they shifted the focus to Kiran Juneja and her family and there was an immediate drop in viewership. "A serial succeeds because viewers find themselves identifying with certain characters, empathising with their problems. They can see their lives reflected in the story they seen unfolding on the screen. When old favourites are suddenly bumped off or sidelined to make way for the new set of characters they’re upset and switch off," Ranganathan says echoing Manish Goswami.. He thinks it’s an intelligent move on the part of the KSBKBT team to remain connected with Tulsi, Ba and the rest of the Virani family while giving equal importance and footage to the next generation who bring into the serial new intrigues that keeps our interest from flagging.

The timing has to be right though. It was in the case of Hasratein which continued to hold the viewers enthralled, even after Seema Kapoor had been replaced by Shefali. In fact, there were many who sympathised more with Savi after she had gone slightly grey and grown quietly dignified with Shefali playing her.

Tara however lost its grip once the story moved from the terrible trio to their terror-raising brats. "Sure, we needed more complications in the plot, more stories needed to be told with the serial turning from a weekly to a bi-weekly. Bit I think we hurried along the serial a little to fast. We should have given viewers more time to let go off these characters who with all their faults and foibles, had touched a chord in them from the very first episode. May be then they would have grown to love Tara’s daughter as much as they loved her because to be fair Grusha’s a very good and hard-working actress too," Navneet Nishan who played the title role in the serial analyses.

Navneet is honest enough to admit that though she didn’t feel betrayed when Tara ceased to be Tara’s story, her interest in the project certainly diminished. "As an actress it’s not as interesting playing an older woman as it is to playing the "new" woman of "new" India. But I’ll always be proud of Tara because she may have been progressive, even permissive, but she was never projected as a "poor thing", a victim. And she always had a point of view," Navneet asserts.

Navneet isn’t too enamoured with the saas-bahu dramas being played out on TV today which have taken women back by almost 25 years, she believes. "I don’t know how people who once loved Tara love these characters today," she sighs. "These women with their saris, sindoor, mangalsutras and their never-ending domestic problems are so archaic. Today’s mothers wear jeans and go to the gym everyday. Even the saas-bahu strifes are so unreal. I think the bahu I played in Andaz despite being an all-black character, was much more true-to-life. At least she had the guts to stand up to her mother-in-law and generated a certain amount of friction whenever she was around, which endeared her to a lot of women out there who have have to keep their frustrations all bottled up."

Like Navneet, Pooja Madan too wasn’t too hot on the idea of going grey. Her first reaction to Sapna’s announcement was, "Oh my God, you want me to look 20 years older!. But once the idea had seeped in, her apprehensions disappeared. She realised that it would be a challenge for her as an actress to play mother to grown-up children. Besides, as she points out, since the time she entered show business she has been playing the simple, homely girl. So she didn’t have a glamorous image to worry about. "I could play a mum with no make-up, dark circles under my eyes, and concentrate on my performance," she maintains.

Yes, there is the danger of getting shunted into mother roles very early in her life and career, but Pooja doesn’t think there’s any harm in getting slotted if the role gives you creative satisfaction. "Hey, I’ve made a place for myself in the industry by playing the girl-next-door. What’s the harm in playing mother now? I know the kind of popularity I’m enjoying today won’t last forever. Once the serial is off the air, you’re forgotten in a flash. So you have to grab the best from what you get. I just hope that 20 years later I look as beautiful as I do in Amanat today," Pooja smiles.

Interestingly, at a time when the whole world was telling Smriti that she was foolishly risking her career playing mother to three young people, it was Apara Mehta who plays Tulsi’s mother-in-law Savita along with "Ba" Sudha Shivpuri, Ekta Kapoor and Smriti’s real life husband, Zubin, who urged her to go for it. "And I realised that it was a bigger risk for Ekta, the producer, than for me the actress to take the two decades jump because so far the ploy hadn’t really worked for any TV producer. The competition is stiffer now and it was tougher for us because KSBKBThas been the No. 1 serial for almost two years now so it was a challenge maintaining the TRPs. But KSKBT which set a trend with its gorgeous look and its saas-bahu conflict, has done it again. We’ve fought the odds and come out a winner," she exults.

Ritu Chaudhury who plays Smriti’s screen daughter Shobha is delighted to be a part of the soap she’s been tuning into regularly for the past two years and doesn’t even mind being recognised as Tulsi’s daughter away from the set."Smriti’s one of the top actresses in the TV industry today. Her role is stronger than ever before," she points out.

For her screen brother Gautam aka Sumeet Sachdev KSBKBT’s been not just a lucky break but also brought him instant stardom. "Today thanks to the serial, I’m in a position to pick and choose," beams the actor who claims he’s nothing like his reel-life persona. "I don’t even lose my temper."
It’s showtime for Mohit Chadda too who plays Sanskar in Amanat. The young actor who was last seen in Hip Hip Hurray, auditioned for the role completely clueless that he was being considered for the central character in a serial that has been on air for almost five years. Now he’s enjoying his moment in the sun. "For the last year-and-a-half Amanat’s been dominated by the girls. Now it’s the turn of us boys," he chortles, very much a part of the Amanat family now.

Pankaj Sharma who plays his brother Kapil in the same serial, is as delighted to be in Zee’s No. 1 serial. "I just love my new moms," he grins. "And what’s even better is that my performance has been noticed."

Does Mohit think that his siblings and he can ensure that the serial stays high on the popularity charts? "Well compared to the older cast we’re still very new. But we’re the chosen ones so we have to perform to the best of our abilities," he says, crossing his finger.

The mood is upbeat. Young and old, everyone involved with these three serials are optimistic that the changeover will work to their advantage. The ploys infectious too. Already germs of the same idea are sprouting in Prem Kishen’s mind. Kishen’s Junoon was one of the biggest shows on Indian television with a cast list that read like a virtual Who’s Who. It was enjoying a successful reign on Doordarshan when suddenly after 520 episodes Mandi House’s policies changed. The tele-epic was denied an extension along with a host of popular shows and taken off the air. Cinevista is fighting a battle in court against DD for abruptly terminating their contract. "There was so much more we wanted to do with the serial. Junoon had so much potential. In fact, we were slowly easing into the next generation when the shutters came down on us," Prem Kishen rues.

Kishen insists that Junoon will be back on air soon. Cinevista is negotiating with different channels and once a deal is cracked, the serial will return with some new characters and stories. "We’ll also take a leap into the future but not by 20 years. We’ll move ahead by 34 years," Prem Kishen informs, adding with a smile, "We don’t have to go too fast because Junoon was always ahead of its times."

It’s interesting that popular soaps that are being panned for taking the Indian woman back by a quarter of a century have ensured their place on the popularity charts with a 20 year jump. Times certainly are changing on Indian television, and how!

—Roshmila Bhattacharya
roshmila@hotmail.com