“THESE TV serials! Murdering aesthetics, morals and values! Daily sessions of brain-bashing about which you can do little more than gnash your teeth!” my friend launched a tirade against TV serials most of which seem to run an infinite course these days.
“Well why watch them if you don’t like them?” I laughed at his ridiculous predicament.
“I have no choice! There was a time when parents and grandparents discouraged kids from watching TV. Well it seems that TV finally exacted its revenge. With these mega-serials it is the parents and grandparents who are hooked!”
“What do you have against these serials?” I needled him unnecessarily, though God knows I have enough against them myself.
“Everything!” he exploded. “They have hijacked my family. Every evening they hold my family hostage!”
Indeed as soon as the TV is switched on the characters of these TV serials flood our sitting rooms with their sprawling families and dominate our lives. Helplessly you are dragged from cry-sis to cry-sis, as one half of the characters seem to spend their time scheming and the other half in shedding torrents of tears!
“Whatever happened to male villains?!” suddenly it occurred to my friend. Yes, whatever happened to them? Well these TV serials have made up for a glaring deficiency in the emancipation of the fair sex. Forget female doctors, engineers and administrators – with female villains women’s liberation has finally arrived!
“Perhaps you would understand these serials better if you just stretch your imagination a bit!” I tried to reason with my friend.
“A bit! My dear I have been stretching it till the convolutions of my brain got straightened out but I am still nowhere near comprehension! Every time things start making some sense, some character undergoes plastic surgery or loses his memory and I am back to square one!” My friend might have been exaggerating a bit but I have often myself felt lost in the labyrinthine turns and twists of these ever-elastic serials.
“I, for one, always fail to understand how one character is related to another in these serials! A guy gets married to one female, then has an accident and (what else!) loses his memory and gets a new face (thanks to exquisite plastic surgery!) marries another lady, regains his memory (though not his face, mercifully!) ends up with two wives, and out of frustration has an affair with yet another lady! Then it turns out that this guy is not who he is supposed to be, as the real guy turns up! Got it?! No?! Well neither do I!” my friend lamented.
Well maybe it might help things if one remembers some basic principles! Never, for example, confuse the lady who lives with this male character as his wife. You see the whole melodrama is about marrying one lady, living with another and miraculously having a child by yet another. And in between, someone or the other, deliberately or accidentally swaps the children when they are born and so ultimately even the serial director doesn’t know which child is whose!
“What is more, these TV serials are promoting dangerous ideas!” my friend warned.
“Among children and youth?” I asked.
“No! Among fathers and grandfathers! You see even the grandfathers in these serials have a bevy of attractive belles trying to ensnare them! My grandfather has been pestering me to buy him a cell-phone and I am sure these serials, that he so religiously watches, are an inspiration behind it! Why he has even started borrowing my clothes! Every time I miss a T-shirt I know exactly where to find it!”
Later that day, back home I delivered a long lecture regarding the senseless frivolity of watching these TV serials to a pair of partly-embarrassed, partly-resentful and somewhat defiant parents! Very firmly I took hold of the TV remote and ruthlessly avoiding the soap-channels came to rest at a news-channel. For a couple of minutes, giddy with a feeling of triumph, I remained rather unfocussed. It took me that much time to realize that the news-channel was featuring a discussion on India-Pakistan relations and the Kashmir issue.
As I tried to concentrate on what they were saying, my father broke in with a gentle voice laden with the subtlest of sarcasm and said “Son, this Mega-serial has been playing for more than half a century now…!” 

(Truth is mostly unpalatable………….but truth cannot be ignored! Here we serve the truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of sauce (iness!). You can record your burps, belches and indigestion,
if any, at snp_ajazbaba@yahoo.com)

Lastupdate on : Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:00 IST