Producers, directors, especially screenplay writers, of Indian serials who make our TV experience varied and enriching — take a bow! For the last decade or so, you have been able to get TV audiences hooked to the boy-meets-the-girl (and, sometimes, impregnates before the wedding bells ring) melodramas. Add extra-marital affairs and saas-bahu stretch and pull to the mix, and the audience is sure to have a full exercise of their brain, totally free of cost. If any of them can make out who’s whose wife, h/she is nothing short of pure genius.

As far as I can make out, the most productive reason for the increasingly productivity of these serials is the progressive sense of family planning among the actors as well as those behind the scenes. Even after years of viewing a Hindi soap opera, one would find it hard to pin down the number of kids of a particular couple (if one can figure out the right match, that is). Then there is the femme fatale — the heroine turned villain, the irrevocable conspirer, master at first building up and then breaking up families. To my amusement, and to the utter chagrin of our womenfolk, the vamp is often successful in her derisive schemes.

Talking about schemes, what creatively they portray on screen! What else could capture the imagination of the housewives and sighing brides-to-be for such a long stretch. Such original and ingenious story-lines, and such mind-bogging performances! I wonder which idiot decided to call the television, where works of total geniuses and craftsman are on display, an idiot box. Something that serves one from his cradle to grave! How ungenerous and

callous.

Think about all the hours you could have wasted reading no-good novels and books and think about what “intellectual” fun you could have had glued before your television set. The comparison pales.

Shouldn’t we all be more progressive and change our thoughts and manners with the times? Why then stick to the hoary books that have been there for ages, literally. In comparison, the ‘intellectual box’ is quite a recent invention, in line with our ever-progressive minds. Here is to the tube, then. Keep up (you folks need no urging, I know) the good work.