Kyon Kii....

Marriage and motherhood have bestowed a new past-time. Serial watching. On Zee TV. It started with watching Zee TV in our hotel - yes, our hotel had Zee TV amongst it channels! Somehow we got hooked onto it strong enough to subscribe to it – when we moved into our own home.


Be it Bani (Kasamh Se) and her all sacrificing nature or Saloni (Saat Phere) and her didi-dom, we watched them all. After watching them for a while, I have distilled the ingredients that go into making one of these super-hit ‘K’ serials.

• The central protagonist has to be an-all-good-doer. No matter what the circumstances, she will ‘do-good’ for her ‘parivaar’ (family).
• She must have either an evil or a mis-guided sister (the raah se bhatki behen)
• There must be an evil sister-in-law, one who catalyses all mis-fortunes for our protagonist.
• There has to be a character, who is unable to conceive. Her lack of issue will foment some more problems for our heroine.
• Husband-wife relations will swing between absolute understanding and absolute hatred.
• The mother-in-law is now loving, caring and understanding, even co-operative. Never before in the history of hindi serials have MIL-DIL relationships been this good. An all-time high.
• Career, achievement, have no importance for our protagonist. Parivaar is everything. In most cases, the female character who steps out of home to get a job, is the one who will turn out to be the evil one.
• The family always stays together. Married sisters included. Patriarchal and Matriarchal systems inter-twine. In fact ‘ghar jamaai’ (house husband) is the order of the day.
• Re-birth or look alikes will save the day, when a character has to be killed off and then brought back again to extend the serial.
• The father, father-in-law or a father-like figure (taaya, chahcha, mama - or some uncle) invariably takes on a second wife and our heroine has to get this evil woman out of her life.
  

So this is my list. Then again, I only watch Zee TV – maybe the other channels have some other formula.
Will someone take up this tag and do one list for some other channel. Meanwhile, its time for Kasamh Se for me.