DesiDabba - Boss, Thoda Sa Roomani Ho Jaye

This serial is the jewel in the Balaji Telefilms crown, being released in 2000, and slowly became a craze. When the first version of KBC pulled audiences to Star, it picked up a lot of the new traffic and generated a lot more TRP’s. 7 years later, it is still there, although one feels now that maybe the time has come to say goodbye. Who am I kidding, it fills a good half-hour slot, makes decent TRP’s (although not as high as before), and no way is this serial going to go off the air. No matter how much people suffer through it. The characters of Tulsi and Mihir (now almost absent) are very popular across countries (in fact, Tulsi aka Smriti Irani leveraged her image to become a political leader).

The concept at its base is a good concept of a strong lady coming into a family where the condition of her joining this rich family is disliked, and she slowly, after many circumstances wins them over. She is able to withstand the infidelity of her husband, and build the family. For a running commentary of the story, read this page on Wikipedia.

The serial has been a good experience of a time machine, with twice the time having clicked over by a full generation in the space between one episode and the next episode. And this is the part that always bugs me; the house remains the same (both inside and outside), the ladies look as beautiful as ever, the cars have not changed at all; and they never discuss anything political or global related that you can identify as having changed in say 20 years. The grandmother of the house becomes a great-granny and then even greater, setting new records for longevity.

Ever since they did the last time machine bit for this serial, it has been getting extremely dull. They introduced new characters, who are either pure evil or very good (and these are kids who are supposed to be still in a learning phase). So what’s going on now ?

There has been a lot of media speculation that Tulsi is going to make her exit (character remains, but Smriti Irani goes) – somewhat linked to the fact that Smriti has her own serials now and Ekta Kapoor is not supposed to be very happy about this competition. So, slowly Tulsi has been shown to making a series of mistakes when she hunts for the wrong-doer, just like the previous time when she was trying to hunt for a killer (and does not find Nandini until almost everyone else had been suspected). She acts impulsively, while the viewer can see that she is making a mistake.

The other issue is that one would really not want to live in such a family. Family members really can be very bitchy to each other, and not really believe the other person. So, everytime, whenever Tulsi does something (may be morally right), she is accused of being overbearing, including frequently by her husband. And of course, when things starts to flag, either an old enemy is pulled out, or something majorly wrong happens.

You may suspect that I watch the serial a great deal to write so much about it, but I have lots of gaps in my knowledge of current affairs in Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. And I am not very apologetic about it.