One of the letters in the alphabet and it's social significance.

This is different from the usual fare on music but it strikes me as something I should atleast say something about. Like it says in the title, one of the letters in the alphabet, and apparently a very important one. The letter K has been defining the modern Indian housewife's consciousness for the past few years. Of course I am referring to those mind-numbing serials that parade on television every single day, probably every single hour for those who can stand it. Now the few questions that might crop up might be..
1> When exactly are you watching all these television series?
2> This thing has been going on for some time. Why dig it up now?

In reply to first I say, my mom( and regrettably my dad) is an ardent fan and her day is incomplete without a sumptuous helping of over dramatization.
The second answer is, for the past four years I have been more in college than home, so I never cared when I came home to find the TV on Saas-Bahu mode. Now that college is over, the magnitude of the situation hits me. They have repeats in the afternoons if the evenings weren't bad enough. The situation is so bad that I wait for my parents to finish dinner with the final soap of their choice before I dare venture into the kitchen for my own dinner!!

Anyway, on to this thing then. What is the K-serial??
As always, it is possible to have differing opinions but I shall try and give a basic summary. It is an alternate universe wherein there is background music( bad background scores man, like all the dholaks in the world for hired for this only), overtly sanctimonious people( whether their character is good or bad), lack of middle ground, common sense, and even the most honest people are dishonest like you wouldn't believe it. If they were students in my school they would be having a lot of things for their parents to sign in their school diaries! Plus, irrespective of how wealthy or not they are, all women are bedecked in the most obscene gold jewelery. Like I said, it's an alternate universe( any ideas of the bullion on Earth would have them ducking for cover). Additionally, they wear the most expensive sarees and jewelery to bed! Granted I might be harping too much on the women here but that's the entire point of these serials. It is to deliver the Indian middle class female from the drudgery of their daily lives into the drudgery of someone else's life on TV, especially since they are well dressed and seem to be rich.

That's just a basic picture, I could go on but I could be accused of standing in the way of female empowerment, and I have always wanted to champion the cause of females.
Onto the social significance of this then, I have often asked my mom whether she realizes this is as far away from real life is as the Sun is from the Earth. She always says yes, but whenever she is watching a particularly gripping scene with a lot of background music( thunder, lightning, drums, high sitars and the camera takes a still of every person in the shot thrice), she bursts out saying something to the effect of this is what happens everywhere today. I ask her where she has seen something like that and she looks at me like I was the biggest dunce on the planet. Honestly man, I didn't know that my family knew people who were that rich that they'd be fighting over tonnes of money.
What intrigues me is not the fact that they have all the females in the country watching, irrespective of social standing, profession or anything. They have hit upon the magic formula and they are exploiting it to the fullest. Even my household help sits with my mom, watches the serials before she goes about her work. I'm sure she has other houses to go for work but she'd rather watch and screw with her job. Incredible. But this doesn't intrigue me because there are many things that I don't understand. Like why do people in our country spend hours and hours watching cricket. Anyway, that's for another day and I think Sachin Tendulkar is God so I might be a little harsh there. What has me going is that now the settings have been changed yet the people watch this the same way they watched everything else before this.

Earlier there was Saas-Bahu from the ultra-rich, ultra-chic, elitist families with more money than they could count. The funny thing would be that if someone lost their memory in one serial, very shortly all of the other serials would have a major protagonist lose their memories. Amnesia is only an example, it stretches to everything, like deaths, rebirths, affairs, the whole shebang. It's like they have a master script and they are tweaking all serials accordingly.
Now the deal is that all the serials have a rural setting, yet they wear awesome jewelery. So OK they might be rich village folk or something. Technically the K at the start of the serials has been replaced by anything that has a rural twist in the title. And it's not just one or two, all of them are like this now. It's just the funniest thing. The background music does not change, neither does the camera panning on everyone thrice when in a climax scene, the extra emotional doses are very much there and they all have a similar subplot. In the series now, there is a matriarch who more often than not is a dominatrix who is not in touch with the present days and times and therefore makes life a living hell for everybody in the surrounding area.
The standout feature of all of these soaps is... MISERY. The amount of glycerin used here could keep entire factories running on overtime. That's the major attraction of it. It refers to the sacrifices that women have to make in the course of living and how they can bounce back from everything, and I mean everything, every female protagonist dies at least thrice in each serial only to be either miraculously saved or to be reborn with the same vengeance in her heart. It's almost like if weren't true..O wait a minute.. it isn't. But who's to tell my mom, or the other millions.There is a better chance for a stable government in Jharkhand.

In concluding, hats off to Balaji Telefilms and their driving pioneer, Ekta Kapoor( are there more K's in her name?? I could have missed out on some). I sometimes think whether this is some kind of plan to take over the world and she is in reality a rebirth if Adolf Hitler, carrying forward his message of torture and conquest, she has definitely achieved both. Nonetheless, a very astute businesswoman, she has single-handedly revolutionized the way TV is viewed in our country and abroad( where these networks are aired). So, all credit to her for that, brilliant market research and an even better business plan later, she's the undisputed mogul of Indian Television. If there was one thing I had to tell her, turn the volume down, get better background score, and for God's sake, introduce some characters with shades of gray, watching only black and white on a colour TV is sad.