One sentence to describe it. Death sentence. One an innocent viewer gets stuck up in its mushy quicksand, that’s it my friend. Prepare to send half an hour to the dogs everyday, for a duration with no upper limit. On and on goes Ekta Kapor’s K trendsetting Kyunki Bla Bla Bla ( I mean Ba), in the garb of a sprawling gujarati Virani household, with a few forty members packaged into a ramshackle ’Shantiniketan’. All this where? In Mumbai, the kingdom of nuclear families. Kya setting hai.
Ekta Kapoor proves with this so- so boring serial- killer, that she has been having two many sleeping pills after all. She started out with one greying ’Baa’ ( naturally sheepish), and her band of three betas. One plus three equal to four. These three betas in turn have two kids and one wife each. Four plus nine equal to thirteen. These kids in turn have their spouses. Thirteen plus twelve twenty five. Well yeah, I guess one fourth of a century is enough to keep the problems arising. But first things first. It revolves around Mihir, the eldest grandson, and his marriage to his childhood friend, Tulsi. This marriage is given hundred percent acceptance by twenty four members. All but Savita, whose anger multiplied by ego gives rejection as a product. There is a divide in the house, with the addition of a counter-productive ex-fiancee, Payal. Hey, I’ve only got a hundred word to explain four into fifty two into three into thirty minutes of drama.
So let’s flick through.
When second woman acts, out of wedlock pregnancies, dead husbands coming back to life in Delhi, secret marriages, kidnapping, etc. run out of steam, Miss Kapoor preordains two years more misery by adding twenty years to everyone’s life. Now Tulsi’s generation’s kids are old enough to have their own kids, and that translates into six into two= twelve kids. Twenty five plus twelve is thirty seven. With each character vying for attention in this mahaparivar, it isn’t a surprise that the soap has been slithering down the bathroom floor so long.
It has its share of anecdotes- a second wife stashed away in Australia, an ex- wife marrying the husband’s cousin, illegitimate kids taking charge of the business, three scheming vamps giggling together like a bunch of college girls. Puhlease! Aren’t you old now? Old, as in wise? Even wisdom is thrown like paprika seasoning with a drizzling of religious sauce. Mihir is equated to Ram, Karan, the illegitimate guy, to the karan of Mahabharatha, and Tulsi to the goddess herself, This as well as followed by the humdrum of pujas every second day ( good timing- by then the serial’s developed plenty of bakvaas to burn in the havan). But the make up falls sharply short of expectations. When a friend of mine walked in, he thought the daughter in law’s husband was her father in law, and that father and son were brothers. Despite two decades added to their resume’s, the fifteen- odd females haven’t aged a tad, forget glasses or dark circles, not even white hair. Just your conventional hair buns and saris to encase feminity in. Wah Wah! Municipality school plays now have a competitor for shabbiness.
The serial drags on and on and on and on, till you yourself don’t switch off to sleep. These huge joint families weigh on the viewer like lead, and everything’s so predictable, you slap your head and hoot ’ Uf Ho!’ Realism of the serial is now enjoying its place in heaven, and thirty seven bustling family members battle it out for space on the screen, dining table and in Shantiniktan.
If you ask me, Ekta should have used the same numerology of which she sings all these K glories in a better way- first find a date to end the damn thing and second, count on her fingers how many characters she’d begging the audience not to hate. And this serial once beat KBC at TRPs. Allah, is my country still one of gavaars who watch this?
So all those who can say they have wisdom without jumping twenty years- please be sweet by not tormenting yourself and not nearing the TV when the blasted thing is going on.
After all, Kyunki Bakvaas Bhi Kabhi Serial Hai, at 2.30 weekdays that is!