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Ravi Chopra

Indianises Bondsman as Beta

Ravi Chopra has Indianised Hal Caine’s classic Bondsman for Beta, his ninth production which makes its debut on Doordarshan.
There is no similarity between my serial and Gulshan Rai’s box-office hit revenge drama Trishul . The story, characterisation and treatment are quite different. The beauty of this serial is that each episode is like a mini-film with a proper beginning, middle and climax

A few years ago, Ravi Chopra had read Hal Caine’s classic Bondsman, a powerful tale of betrayal, hatred, vengeance and revenge. It immediately set him thinking in terms of making a serial with all the essential dramatic ingredients of the novel but with an “original” Indian story. The result is Beta, Ravi Chopra’s ninth television production, which will premiere on Doordarshan’s National Network on September 6 (Monday, 9 p.m.). Written by Ram Govind, the 104-episodes serial stars Pankaj Dheer, Navni Parihar, Mrinal Kulkarni, Siraj, Smita Bansal, Sudhanshu Pandey and Rajesh Puri among others.

Beta is a story of Avinash Puri, played by Pankaj Dheer, the two women in his life and his three children. In his fifties, Avinash is a successful businessman, trusted and respected by his associates. His wife Gayatri (Navni Parihar) dotes on him and she too has endeared herself in her social circle through her charitable activities. Blessed with two children, Ajay and Mahima, he is thankful to God for his bountiful mercies. But Avinash is not a happy and contended man despite all his material success. He feels lonely and haunted by his past, and only he knows the reason for his guilt.

No one knows that in his youth he had married Shalini (Mrinal Kulkarni) only to abandon her when she had got pregnant and needed him the most to take care of her. This act of betrayal haunts him in his later years. He was truly repentant and wanted to make amends, but he was unable to do so because he didn’t know Shalini’s whereabouts.

Shalini is a woman of substance, patient in suffering, passionate in love, but fierce in hatred. Betrayed and deserted by Avinash, on her death-bed, she had made her son swear revenge on the man who had ruined her life and happiness. Thus what follows is a saga of conflicting emotions, hatred, revenge and retribution. The plot thickens when the two sons of Avinash falls in love with the same girl. And when Gayatri learns about Avinash’s past, it adds another angle to the plot.

While the story begins in the present and follows the linear format of story-telling, Avinash’s past, the story of Shalini and why he betrays his first wife is revealed in flashbacks in each episode as the story progresses. When queried why Avinash deserts Shalini, Ravi very briefly says it’s for money. “He always wanted to marry a rich woman,” he adds.

But Pankaj Dheer who plays Avinash says he doesn’t betray or desert Shalini. “There is no desertion at all,” he says. “It just happens that he meets another woman and circumstances compel him to marry her.” Then after a long pause he adds, “Actually I don’t know much about the character because we shot the pilot episode in a hurry. So Raviji should know better.” However, he finds his role pretty interesting with varied shades. “It has an age graph from 30 to 60. So I am young as well as grey in terms of age as well as character,” he adds further.

Playing a loving wife whose faith in her husband is shattered when she comes to know of his first wife, Navni Parihar says the graph of her role is from the age of 20 to 45. “Gayatri comes from a rich family. She is god-fearing and loves her husband very much. But she goes through a trauma when she gets to know about her husband’s past and his revengeful son from hsi first wife,” explains Navni.

Mrinal Kulkrni, who plays Shalini, says her role is crisp but very important at the same time. “The whole revenge angle is because of me. It’s a role very similar to the one Waheeda Rehman played in Trishul,” she reveals. However, Ravi Chopra says there is no similarity between his serial and Gulshan Rai’s box-office hit revenge drama of the late ’70s. “The story, characterisation and treatment are quite different,” he assures. “The beauty of this serial is that each episode is like a mini-film with a proper beginning, middle and climax.”