Heart to heart

Television

Heart to heart

It seems to be an emotionally touching serial but whether Tumhara Intezaar Hai lives upto its promise remains to be seen. At the outset, the story of the serial is very unusual and sensitive. About to be married the next day, the boy asks his fiancee to meet him one last time as his lover. She agrees and they decide to meet at their usual place. As luck would have it, the girl has an accident and dies in front of the boy.

This is where the unusual twist to the story begins. He refuses to accept that she is dead and goes into depression. After leading the life of a recluse for two long years, he is forced to come out of it by another girl who also happens to love him.

Incidentally, he meets a woman who looks like his dead lover and tries to cling to her for comfort. “To help him come out of his grief this woman agrees to play his beloved. She is married and does this on the advice of a psychiatrist and with the permission of her husband. It is ironical but over the period, she actually falls in love with this character. This takes this story on a new and different track. “My passion is to go for off-beat stories,” says Pearl, the writer of the serial. It is scheduled for Zee television.

The serial is produced by Jayant Seth, who took up the subject only because of the novelty of its track. Since the subject is sensitive, he opted for Rajan Sahi to direct it. “He has assisted Ravi Rai for a long time and knows the nerve of the subject. Since the subject is a young love story, we needed a director with young approach. Even the locations are very new and although I might have spent a little more on this serial, the end result is a real paisa vasool,” says Seth.

Rajan Sahi had assisted Ravi Rai for four years and learnt the nuances of directing emotional scenes from him. According to him, the unique thing about this serial is its mounting and the fact that the story is very focussed. “Normally serials have multi tracks. This is a simple one-track story and gives the impression of a film. It has only eight main characters and we have avoided too much of deviation from the main story. Even the dialogues are very simple and straight, not philosophical and long,” he reveals.

Vishal Singh, Tejaswini and Shruti Ulfat are cast in lead roles. For Vishal it will be his first continuity role but the lad is surely confident. He has a lot of hopes pinned on it since the character has many shades and not many tracks to shift the focus from him. Kenny Desai, who plays the father of Tejaswini, is also looking forward to his role in this serial. “This explores all the relationships beautifully. Father daughter relation is the main issue but at the same time, my character is built up independently also. I have a silly side to my personality and the way my wife handles it is shown very nicely,” he explains.

This is the first serial produced by Jayant Seth. The final package was so attractive that Zee had immediately allotted it a slot and dates for the telecast. This is very uncharacteristic of the channel. Somehow, this team could not churn out enough episodes in time to encash this opportunity and is now awaiting the telecast date. “It is unfortunate, but in our hurry to capitalise on the slot allotment we could not present a substandard product to our viewers. Our aim is to give the best possible and stand out in the crowd. If we have to wait a little longer, then that is preferable to lowering our production quality. This is my first project and I want it to set the standard for me,” says Jayant. “A little monetary loss is nothing compared to a better viewers response,” he adds.