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| Unintentional parody: Ardhangini |
| n Piyush Roy Unintentional parody: Ardhangini Mon-Thu, 11 pm, Zee TV AS she runs and runs (no wonder she is so skinny) wherever there's space be it through the never ending lone corridors of her Victoria Memorial-like house or the busy streets of Kolkata till 'big eyes' halts her with her hawkish looks. If you haven't guessed, the runner following in Aishwarya Rai's sprint steps from Devdas is the heroine of Zee TV's latest 'lavish' late night offering, Ardhangini, while big eyes - her Lalita Pawar-esque step mother is the plot's villain no.1, as of now. She's of course not without her henchmen rather henchwoman here in operation home torture of her step daughter. A Nigar Khan like look alike and big eyes' 'own' daughter accompanies her as a sidekick and acts and behaves like Khan from her million telly vamp acts (what an inspiration?). Now the problem of the small screen Ash is that, she is more beautiful, a la the typical 'chand without a daag' way, than big eyes' own daughter. So that's Vivah revisited again, after Bidaai on Star Plus. Of course there's a benevolent dad with hardly a voice, who sympathises with the wannabe telly Ash and even raises a hand occasionally in slap mode that however stops midway without fructification whenever he catches big eyes' in her inhuman plottings against the good, suffering daughter. When pensive, he hammers along on the piano, a la Saif Ali Khan in Parineeta. For those wondering the references to Devdas and Parineeta, the soap's set in a similar time warped aristocratic Bengali household and heightens the plot liberties of Bhansali's Devdas to distorting cacophony. Giving the makers their due, the sets are impressive at least vis--vis the existing competition, but wonder who in this age has a pool inside the drawing room and rooms as big as marriage halls? As regards the characters, they can't even be sourced to the middle ages - there's a mother who showers jewellery on all and sundry on hearing about the arrival of her son from the USA after 14 years of studying, while his grown up beloved fantasises about him looking at a picture of his in the prep school. If not an email, the separated lovers could have at least exchanged photos and letters since the soap's biggest joke - its time-wrapped characters are all set in today's day and age. The characters are embodiments of half-baked Bengali stereotypes functioning to hammed irritation - there's the big eyed khol splattered mother who seems to have stuffed at least four rasogullas into her mouth at any given moment, the twinkling eyes Thakuma (grand mother), spineless men sleep walking through their parts in dhoti-kurtas and a host of ladies loaded with jewellery and layers of clothing sauntering within the house in perennial party mood, mouthing Bengali-cised corruptions of Hindi with an 'O' in every word. A piece of advice for the makers - if you are really keen on recreating stories set in the Bengali milieu for the small screen there's no dearth of good stories to tell. Even a casual skimming of its rich literature will have you stumble upon a minefield of interesting stories waiting to be adapted and told. Hark back to the golden age of Doordarshan and just catch a few episodes of the technically perhaps not as lavish, but narrative, story and performance wise classics abounding with memorable characterisations in serial's like Mujrim Hazir, Srikanta, Gana Devta and Ashapurna Devi's Pratham Pratishruti to name a few. And please, please, please don't make a caricature of another culturally rich and 'normally behaving' Indian community. The Gujaratis have already been abused beyond recovery courtesy the myriad soapy tributes to them over the past few years. Verdict: Mind you, this unintentional parody is telecast at 11pm in the night. An extra half-hour of sleep instead is highly recommended for late night telly owls. |
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