Thousands of kilometres away from Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where a young doctor was raped and brutally murdered, a morbid drama is playing out in a corner of Delhi.
Padma, a domestic worker, is sexually molested by a rich man’s son, Yuvraj, in his future wife’s home. His prospective mother-in-law is so enraged by this that she slaps Padma, yes, Padma, hard across her cheek.
Familiar? Of course: how often is the woman blamed for the sexual advances of a man who just can’t help himself? In this case, fiction reflects reality. Padma is a character in the melodrama Advocate Anjali Awasthi, now playing on Star Plus/Hotstar.
With a little help from her well-wishers, a case is registered against the molester, who is snug in the belief that his family’s wealth and social standing will save him. That’s because he hasn’t met Padma’s lawyer, Advocate Anjali Awasthi, the tough-talking motormouth who doesn’t take no for an answer. “In court, meri baat chalti hai, aur bahar, mera haath” (In court, my word rules; outside, it’s my fist), she tells the family lawyers representing Yuvraj.
There’s something about slapping and Hindi TV series: it is delivered often by women and almost always before a family audience. The strength of the slap is such that it sends electric shockwaves through the faces of the witnesses, who light up like bulbs. Sometimes, their mouths fall open.
More importantly, the slap smacks of social status and power. The subtext is, it’s all right to slap someone like Padma who works in your home; it’s ok to slap, or attempt to slap, your daughter-in-law (Bhagya Lakshmi, Zee); it’s fine for daughters-in law to slap each other (Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, Star Plus)…
If you watch Hindi TV series, you will understand that the slap is the violent expression of the turbulent emotions seething inside the women—when they can no longer contain their hatred, envy, treachery, sense of injustice or even their desires, they go SMACK.
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Womanly violence
Violence in general is the most popular form of entertainment on streaming channels like Netflix, Amazon Video, Hotstar, Apple TV, etc. However, domestic violence and violence against women are much more at home in Hindi TV series on channels such as Star Plus, Zee, Sony, Colors, etc.
Examples: Vedika has just been attacked by goons sent to assault her by Rajeshwari, the matriarch of the house (Pukaar, Sony), but the blame is placed on her mother Saraswati, in a dark, poisonous plan to set them against each other. In Kavya (Sony), the grandmother is pushed down the stairs in a fight between the two male protagonists.
Amruta is badly injured when she leaps in front of her husband Virat to save him from a prank by his former wife Priyanka, who has been summoned back to the family mansion by his mother to separate the new couple (Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye, Zee).
And of course, there’s television’s most beloved character Anupamaa in the eponymous series (Star Plus)—she’s just been stabbed, viciously, in the stomach by Meghna, in front of the entire family. They are so stunned that none of them think to call for an ambulance.
What follows at the hospital is mental torture of the most absurd kind: the doctor first tells the family that Anupamaa has only a 1 per cent chance of survival—which medical practitioner does that? Then, a nurse bluntly tells them that she is dead. And hey presto, before you know it, Anupamaa miraculously opens her eyes—”Unbelievable!” exclaims the doctor. It truly was.
The reason for prolonging the family’s agony here was a melodramatic ploy designed to slowly expel all the pent-up, mixed-up emotions of each character—and of the tense audience.
Parivar and atyachar
At the heart of this emotional release is the family. One way to explain many of the silly, laughable elements in TV soaps is by examining how families are represented—unkindly, to put it kindly. The lavish mansions, the loud jewellery, the layers of makeup, and the gaudy clothes disguise the war within families.
A TV soap family is a site of conflict, conflicting ambitions, thwarted desires and, as one character says in Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, constant “chik-chik”. In Rishta Kya…, Anupamaa, Advocate Anjali Awasthi, Pukaar, Jubilee Talkies (Sony), Kavya, Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye, and Bhagya Lakshmi, to name some popular shows, there’s a trust deficit in the family.
The joint family, the parivar, is dressed up and then layer after layer of emotional atyachar is stripped bare, exposing the ploys, the plots, and tricks of the members to get what they want—even if the very family, in whose name they act, is destroyed.
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Melodrama as a mirror?
The vehicle that propels the action forward is love triangle and the wicked matriarch or the mother-in-law. Yes, that old saas-bahu format continues to dominate today’s TV series—although the women now perform fewer religious rituals and poojas than they did in series such as Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki (2000-2008, Star Plus).
Barring Anupamaa, all the series mentioned above have two women vying for the affections of one man, or one man torn between the two, or one woman trying to separate the other woman and the man. Got it?
They do this with the help of the mother figure, who either wants someone to marry her son or her son not to marry the woman he loves—Pukaar and Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye, for example. Everything else that happens in the serials is trappings.
Perhaps it’s time to watch these serials again: we might gain some understanding of the toxic, often stifling emotions that bubble beneath the surface of traditional family values.
Those emotions need an outlet—in the TV series they find it in violence, thwarted love affairs, and family politics. Is it the same in reality?
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)