Indian TV Soaps - Serial killers

Falling prey to an onslaught of Indian Television Soap-operas could proved to be the single life sucking experience for an average Indian male. Watching an Indian TV soaps could well be both mentally harrowing and emotionally draining experience. This is completely from my own humble experience after having left with no option but to watch them for fairly substantial no. of hours of their airing time everyday. Mentally harrowing because your gray cells would want to explode as you watch it and feels like you are eternally stuck  with a "WHY ME" syndrome. Emotionally draining as you are exposed to insistent barrage of appalling, out of the world histrionics packed with melodrama and conversational non-sequiturs that leave people scratching their heads or make them numb with emotional distress. If you are one of such victims, you would empathize with it more as your own agony plays out before your eyes while reading this.

Indian Soaps are examples of intelligent TV programming addictive for those who want to watch it,with never ending story plots, each one deceiving to offer a fresh storyline with an embedded social message in their promos but only to fallback on the same old cliches after few episodes. As my version of the slogan of one channel says "Rishta Nahin, Soch Wohi" literally "no relation, same cerebration". This is nothing but an old trick to let the viewers especially housewives fall prey and remain glued to the TV sets in anticipation of something new and interesting.

Every soap supposedly portrays a middle class family that would have mansions with bright ornate walls, marble flooring, and giant decorative pillars, inter-spread with silken curtains impelling Indian economists to revisit their poverty line threshold estimates. TV channels have started a irritating new trend to rope in Salman Khan in every other promotional venture for new reality shows, or Soaps. I freak out whenever see this guy with his perpetually swollen puffy eyes, terribly bad Hindi skills and utterly disgusting hip-gyrating movements.

These soaps would have carefully chosen unusually long titles preferably lines from a popular Hindi song, with first line played up and rest displayed in cleverly indistinguishable case affixed in the end during the promos and the song is repeatedly played in the background. The female characters in these soaps are incredulously made up and decked up everytime and everywhere (including unusual places as kitchen, bedrooms, while sleeping!!). While this buffoonary being enacted on screen, one could spot some peculiarly distinctive background sounds which adds to this dramatic effect -

1. For all the wicked wives, bahus and sister-in-laws, a signature tune plays out in the background whenever they enter the scene or when their evil, conniving thoughts set into motion (a lot of thinking aloud goes with it!!). Here there is a unusually heavy emphasis on use of indian percussions with characteristically repetitive thumping which builds up in a huge crescendo and then collapses
2. then goes a peculiar crashing cymbal sound for occasional accents or shocking revelations accompanied by camera swooshing and swishing movements from all directions with every possible angles converging into the contorted and over-expressive faces of casts. Sudden camera zooms,  awkwardly abrupt fast and slow motions (usually within a second from each other) will follow.
3. finally the virtuous bahu signature background tune that would have probably a piece of violine or sitar with lot of chorus effect (something like lalla la lala)

No doubt that all these 'subtle refinements' would requires equally monumental efforts and commitment from actors.

I found that sometimes male characters in these serials even would have effeminate tendencies. In one such soap, the only Son of an orthodox Marwadi family has been brought up in a overly protective environment and we are made to realize this during the episodes when his mother cries out and calls him an abominably annoying "MUNNA" several times. Sometime it becomes difficult to tell if it is "MUNNA" or "MUNNI" she is addressing to...

Well, this is eternally unending saga of buffoonery which has potential to bring forth an entire blog in itself. I hope some of you would have gotten some clue about my condition and would commiserate with my feelings.


For those of you who are not deterred but rather felt sufficiently motivated after reading this post and please have a look at guide on "UNDERSTAND INDIAN SOAP OPERAS"