As anyone who follows these things would know, Heidi Klum dressed up as the Goddess Kali for a Halloween party a few days ago, in a costume that was remarkable for its attention to detail: the many blue arms carefully in place, skulls and shrunken heads dangling from the Goddess’s hips as accessories, and Klum’s husband Seal as the finger-collecting bandit Angulimaal. My first darshan of this Kali was on the pages of Delhi Times, the photo caption memorably stating that “this proves Klum has respect for the Hindu goddess”. Because apparently that’s what Halloween is all about – dressing up as people you respect.
Even so, various Hindu groups in the US say their sentiments have been hurt by Klum’s masquerade. These people should stop worrying and take a cue from Ekta Kapoor’s recent pronouncement at a Dahi Handi celebration. "Anyone who dresses up as a God is God for me," said the creative head of Balaji Telefilms, shortly after she bent to touch the feet of Mrunal Jain, the young actor who plays Krishna in Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharat Ki.
Ekta's remark leads me to wonder what might happen if she were to encounter a Halloween Kali.
K3, a tale of the apocalypse
Dressed as the Goddess Kali, the Jabberwock enters Ekta Kapoor’s office in the Balaji headquarters, whereupon Ekta emits a squeal of delight, then assumes a pious stance and throws herself at my feet.
“I am pleased and will grant you a boon,” I tell her, “but make it quick, I have a Halloween party to get to and you know what traffic is like these days.”
“I’m torn,” Ekta replies, “On the one hand I need better TRPs for all my K-serials, but on the other hand I want my brother Tusshar’s career to reach grand heights. What to ask for?”
“Let me be the one to worry about multiple hands,” I say. “We Gods like to keep everyone happy but your wishes are so malignant that if both of them were granted they would unleash a destructive force which would promptly end this kalpa of the world. Hence I can grant only one at this time.”
Having spoken thus, I hold forth two bowls containing liquids of an indeterminate colour. “If you imbibe the contents of this one here, TRPs will shoot up and Kyunkii Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi will carry on for another 300 years, but Tusshar will continue to appear on pet shows for eternity. If you drink the other one, your brother will shine with the luminosity of a thousand Shah Rukh Khans but your K-serials will soon be cancelled. Now choose quickly – Angulimaal is waiting for me outside.”
Unfortunately TV honchos have never been known for their restraint, and barely have I finished speaking when Ekta snatches both bowls out of my hands and gulps them down noisily. The sound of a distant rumbling is heard and I briefly wonder if the scion of Balaji is suffering from indigestion. But then Lord Kalki appears on a large white horse, and the world ends as promised. An extra K will do that.
[Earlier posts on Ekta and her serials here, here and here]
Without comment, here's the synopsis for two consecutive episodes - yes, two full, 30-minute episodes - of Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharat Ki, as provided on the Tata Sky menu.
Aunty asks Radha not to think about Krishna as her father wouldn’t allow her to marry him. Radha tells her that she is attracted to Krishna and can’t help thinking about him. Radha’s father arranges for her marriage. Sudhir informs Krishna that Radha wants to meet him near river Yamuna. Radha tells Krishna that her parents are getting her married. They part ways.
After she leaves, Krishna plays with his flute. You know what teenage boys are like these days.
Okay, okay, the last bit is my contribution to the saga. Ekta should totally pay me to do this.
(Earlier Kahaani posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Currently the problem with Kahaani Hamaaray Mahaabharat Ki (earlier posts about the show: 1, 2, 3, 4) is that the actors playing the younger versions of the Pandavas and Kauravas are much too old for their roles. The story has reached the point where the Pandavas and Kunti have returned to Hastinapura, and the princes are about to commence their education under Kripa (and later Drona), so you’d think that they would be aged somewhere between 13 (Yudhisthira) and 9 (Sahadeva) – definitely no older. That's probably how it's supposed to be too, given some of the childlike prattle and random fooling around that's happening in the show (Bheema gifts Duryodhana his pet rabbit, would you believe; Duryodhana reciprocates by sneaking food into Bheema’s room). Unfortunately, all the princes are played by muscular hunks with stubbles and impressively developed torsos, and this detracts from the intended cuteness of many scenes.
For example, the slapstick sequence where Bheema beats up cooks and palace guards who have mistaken him for a food-thief (throwing some of them into giant vats so that their dhotis catch fire, etc) was probably conceptualised as an endearing introduction to the gluttonous second Pandava, but it doesn’t play out that way at all. This Bheema is no lovable little kid, he’s a well-built bully, and this is nothing less than a cringe-inducing display of machismo directed at helpless domestic staff. What does he think he's doing, practicing for the Olympic wrestling medal?
Anyway, the brawl is interrupted by Yudhisthira who solemnly tells his younger brother “Nihatte par vaar nahin karte” (“You mustn’t attack the unarmed”). These words of wisdom apparently prove that the eldest Pandava is worthy of the title “Dharma Raj”, but in my view it’s much too little, much too late. (I’m no Dharma Raj, but if Bheema were my kid brother I would’ve marched him off to the detention room long before any of this happened.)
It probably wasn’t what Ekta Kapoor’s writers intended, but after watching this scene any sensible viewer will feel sorry for the Kauravas, who had to face much the same sort of thing from the overenthusiastic Bheema. Take a look at this passage from Kisara Mohan Ganguli’s comprehensive translation of the Mahabharata, available on the Sacred Texts site:
Bhimasena beat all the sons of Dhritarashtra. The son of the Wind-god pulled them by the hair and made them fight with one another, laughing all the while. And Vrikodara easily defeated those hundred and one children of great energy as if they were one instead of being a hundred and one. The second Pandava used to seize them by the hair, and throwing them down, to drag them along the earth. By this, some had their knees broken, some their heads, and some their shoulders. That youth, sometimes holding ten of them, drowned them in water, till they were nearly dead. When the sons of Dhritarashtra got up to the boughs of a tree for plucking fruits, Bhima used to shake that tree, by striking it with his foot, so that down came the fruits and the fruitpluckers at the same time.
(The reference to "one hundred and one" has me worried. Did Bheema also beat up the Kauravas' sister Duhshala? Anyway, the text goes on to add that he didn’t do any of this with malicious intent, it was all in good fun. Decide for yourselves.)
Ironically, while the princes in the serial look too mature for their age, their grandmothers haven’t aged a whit. The actresses - or more accurately woodposts - playing Ambika and Ambalika (whose function it is to stand around in the background and beam stupidly at everything being said) still have jet-black hair, no wrinkles and they dress more sexily than their daughters-in-law Gandhari and Kunti. It has become difficult to keep track of who belongs to what generation. Old man Bheeshma must be contemplating early retirement.
Meanwhile, in the parallel story set in Gokula, the adolescent Krishna is going through all the cute routines that have been passed down to us from the Bhakti tradition, long after the Mahabharata was first written: stealing butter, making naughty eyes at milkmaids, taming the snake Kaaliya and dancing atop his head. The problem is that the beefcake playing Krishna looks like he’d rather be reading a Penthouse like any normal young man his age, or at least taking part in a WWE competition. It’s disturbing when the "grown-ups" fondly refer to him as “natkhat baalak”. (I don’t want to get too explicit, but the shots of this “baalak” with white butter smeared on his face have some very adult resonances for those of us who have grown up in the kalyug of porn films.)
Am looking forward to seeing what the officially grown-up versions of these characters will look like. Oh wait, here.
(Note to eager offence-takers: I’m only talking about the actor who plays the role of Krishna; I’m not implying that the original Krishna would ever have read a Penthouse, which almost certainly wouldn’t have been available at the time anyway.)
I’ve been carrying on about Ekta’s Mahabharata, but the other day I came across a show titled Draupadi, on Sahara One. Saw just 15-20 minutes of the episode (think it was a one-hour slot) and though it looked quite dreadful in many ways – with the usual garish Amar Chitra Katha-style costumes, over-decorated sets and actors with Colgate smiles – I thought it was interesting for the way it turns the great epic into a languidly paced, long-drawn-out daytime soap.
For one thing, this show doesn’t seem too concerned with the “big picture” of the Mahabharata. Instead, it spends a lot of time showing the everyday details of the characters’ lives, especially the women’s – in that sense, it reminded me of Pratibha Ray’s intimate novel Yajnaseni. The episode I saw was set sometime after the Pandavas and Draupadi return to Hastinapur after her swayamvara, and it was full of homely conversations – between Draupadi and Duhshala (the Kauravas’ sister), and between Bhanumati (Duryodhana’s wife) and Rituvati (Karna’s wife). The talking point was that the visiting Karna has just sent Draupadi a bouquet of yellow roses, which she is known to have a preference for. What could this mean?
I’ve often wondered what might result if someone were to fully exploit the Mahabharata’s obvious possibilities as a never-ending daytime serial – to stretch it out for years, emphasizing the characters’ interactions and daily routines rather than simply moving from one dramatic setpiece to another. Such treatment would necessarily have the effect of humanising all the people; for example, it would be difficult to think of Duryodhana as a cardboard-cutout villain after you’ve seen him having a relaxed, post-dinner conversation with his wife and children, discussing nothing more important than their Math homework. In fact, the Draupadi episode I saw had a scene where Bhanumati asks Duryodhana what he thinks of Jayadratha. “You know he’s my friend,” he replies. I meant, what do you think of him as a suitor for Duhshala, she asks, whereupon Duryodhana turns to her, his face softening. “I never thought of him in that light before,” he says thoughtfully, and she replies that it’s usually the women of the house who think of these little details while the men are preoccupied with grander matters. I haven’t seen anything like this scene in any other mythological serial.
Note: meanwhile, Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabhaarat Ki (which I had thought was going to be an endless soap) is currently in such a mad rush to get to the story of Krishna’s birth and childhood in time for this month's Janmashtmi that it has fast-tracked its way through three generations of Kuru princes, not even bothering to depict the births of Yudhisthira and Bheema. An excited Vishnu, reclining on his snake mount, turns to the viewer and announces that He is ready to take earthly form, and Kamsa maama’s personal background theme includes the mooing of a cow in obvious pain. Exciting times lie ahead.
Philosophical question for the day: if you’re a poet who has spent a lot of time and energy persuading an elephant-headed God to transcribe your opus, is it wise to include a scene where the hero of the epic (whom you repeatedly extol in the verse) proves his manhood and general superiority by punching a harmless elephant on the forehead?
Because that's what the grown-up Devavrata/Bheeshma does in his first scene in Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharata Ki. With absolutely no provocation (the pachyderm is merely ambling out of the palace gate), our hero performs a Matrix-style leap, bops the poor animal between its eyes, bringing it to its knees, and then climbs atop it with a triumphant yell. I picture Ekta Kapoor calling a hurried conference with her writers to plan this scene. “We’re about to introduce one of the most important characters in the epic,” she tells them, “We need a maximum-impact shot. What’s the largest animal on the set?”
But imagine how Ganesha would feel about this. He hasn’t had enough of a raw deal already? First Vyasa invites him to earth, which means he has to undergo a long and tedious wait as the Google Earth software downloads on his computer. After this, his sadistic mouse-steed elects to take the most difficult route possible through a dense forest, so that Ganpati has to ward off leaves and branches with his many plastic hands. Then Vyasa, instead of giving him a nice air-conditioned office and an endless supply of coffee, makes him sit in a dank, mossy cave that has dandruffy substances floating down from the roof. The working hours are no good and the stylus feather tickles his trunk. And to top it all, he has to write out this demeaning scene where Devavrata proves his king-worthiness by violently attacking an elephant that could well be a descendent of the beast who lent Ganesha his head after the bathroom wars all those yugas ago.
I feel for Ganesha, I really do, because this reminds me of the time I helped a friend improve the language in an internal brochure for a public-relations company. I don’t clearly remember what purpose the document was to serve (if any), but midway through the second paragraph I found that it included a diatribe about how terrible and avaricious journalists were, how their mistreatment of PR people would be avenged in the after-life, and other such ravings. Of course, I feel much the same way today, but this was during my early months in journalism when I was still prone to fits of idealism about the profession. Just reading some of the thoughts expressed in the brochure felt like someone was thumping my forehead with a hammer – and as if that wasn't bad enough I was required to refine the thing further.
My advice to Ganesha would be to keep quiet for now, but to get his revenge by deviating from Vyasa’s script in the future. I suspect Ekta’s writers will help him in this endeavour.
[Earlier posts on the show here and here. And some pictures to show that elephants are mostly sweet and harmless animals and should be preserved]
I have a feeling that Ekta’s Mahabharata will soon cease to be funny and settle down into the solemn blah-ness of all her daytime soaps. Episode 2 contained lots of the familiar camera whooshes and swishes, sudden zooms, intensely irritating combinations of fast and slow motion (often used within seconds of each other), excessive reaction shots and awkward, stilted dialogue. When the key character of Ganga is introduced, the camera lingers on the giant blue sapphires in her earrings and necklace, showing us her face only as a sudden afterthought. (Cameraman slaps self on the forehead: "I knew there was something we were leaving out!")
More worrisome is the interaction between Vyasa and Ganesha. As any Mahabharata enthusiast knows, Ganesha’s pre-condition for agreeing to transcribe Vyasa’s poem is that the thing is recited continuously – no breaks or deviations. To which Vyasa replies that Ganesha must fully comprehend each verse before he sets it down. This is all very well, but midway through the meeting of King Shantanu and the mysterious lady in white who will become his queen, Vyasa interrupts his narrative and teasingly asks Ganesha, “Ab aap yeh soch rahe hoge ki yeh aurat kaun hai aur kya chahti hai?” (“Now you must be wondering who this woman is and what she wants”).
There are two problems with this chatty interlude: one, it means Vyasa has already reneged on his side of the bargain, so Ganesha is entitled to cite breach of contract, tear up the manuscript, clamber onto his rat steed and fly back into the stratosphere whence he came. The second problem is one of insolence. Aren’t Gods supposed to be omniscient? If I were in Ganesha’s sandals, I would have yanked at the sage’s beard for daring to imply that there was something I didn’t already know. (Actually, since Ganesha would have known beforehand that Vyasa was going to ask the question, he could have yanked at his beard without even waiting for him to ask it.)
So the narrative framework of this show will likely be a problem as things progress, and I wouldn't be surprised if the poet and his transcriber are smacking each other on the head by the time we arrive at Book Two. One of the best things about the B R Chopra Mahabharata was its use of Time – represented by a revolving chakra – as a narrator. The two sutradhaars in Ekta’s version display less personality than that wooden wheel.
Once again, real life makes satire seem feeble. When I wrote this post about Ekta Kapoor’s Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharata Ki, I had no idea how summarily the actual show would outstrip my expectations. The first episode was telecast last night and though it didn’t feature the Tushhar Kapoor item number I had been hoping for, there was lots else to relish.
In the first of many inventive twists, the kahaani begins not at the beginning but with the game of dice and the attempted disrobing of Draupadi – which, we are told, is the single most important incident in the epic. Most of the Pandavas are shown in silhouette (possibly because the casting hadn’t been finalised when this episode was shot), Shakuni giggles continually and resembles Dr Evil in the Austin Powers films, Duryodhana has impressive breasts and there is unintentional phallic imagery in the worm’s eye shots of Bhima’s mace limping impotently between his legs. At the end of the episode, the actress playing Draupadi turns to the camera and shrieks something to the effect that whenever a woman is insulted or dishonoured, a great war will take place and the world will be changed (which leads me to wonder if Ekta and her scriptwriters follow the daily news at all). After this, a long cosmic zoom-out reveals that our solar system is but a speck in the waggling ear of the elephant-headed Lord Ganesha; as Vyasa prepares to compose his great poem with Ganesha as his transcriber, we may expect that the story will be narrated chronologically from episode 2 onwards.
Notes on the first episode:
- The opening dateline, written in Hindi, says “Dwapara Yuga, approximately 2000 B.C.” This is a bit like saying "Indraprastha, located approximately 8,000 miles east of New York". Do these guys even know what “B.C.” means? They need to be careful about offending the saffron brigade by acknowledging the existence of another religion.
- Most of the script is in shudh Hindi (compared to the more ornate language used in B R Chopra’s production of the epic) but pronunciation definitely needs to be worked on. For instance, someone should quickly inform the actor playing Duryodhana that it’s “gadaa-dhaari Bhima”, not “gadha-dhaari Bhima”. The former means “mighty Bhima, wielder of maces”, which sounds very grand, but the latter translates into the much less impressive “mighty Bhima, carrier of donkeys”. This has the effect of further diminishing the dignity of a character who doesn’t have a huge amount of it in the first place. Also, the Mahabharata war would look very ludicrous if Bhima spent all his time on the battle-field time brandishing donkeys by their hind legs. (Even worse is "gadha-daadi Bhima", which simply means "mighty Bhima who resembles the beard of a donkey".)
- They had tattoos in the Dwapara Yuga! The pretty-boy actor playing Yudhisthira has an elaborate one on his right shoulder and, not sure about this, but I think Draupadi has one on her neck. Closer inspection reveals these to be writing of some sort. Remember Amitabh in Deewaar brooding about the line “Mera baap chor hai” (“My father is a thief”) tattooed on his arm? Well, given the dubious origins of many of the characters in the Mahabharata, there are richer possibilities here. Suggestions for tattoos for other characters:
Yudhisthira’s son: “Mera baap juwari hai” (“My father is a gambler”)
Bhima’s son: “Mera baap gadha-dhari hai” (“My father wields donkeys”)
Bheeshma: “Meri maa nadi hai” (“My mother is a river” [and abandoned me when I was a child, resulting in my life-long problems with women])
Drona: “Meri maa katori hai” (“My mother is a bowl”)
Comparing tattoos would be therapeutic for the people concerned, a bit like attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meet and discovering that others are much more screwed up than you are. (Karna, of course, would probably need to get himself tattooed from head to toe, in font size 8.)
- The most impressive bit in the episode by far was when Draupadi calls out to Krishna for help and he heeds her call by sending forth a gigantic sudarshan chakra that resembles a flying saucer. The zoom-in from outer space towards the topography of India on the rotating globe suggests that when Gods wanted to come down to earth to answer individual prayers in the ancient days, they used Google Earth to find their way. This raises intriguing possibilities: what if Krishna got his coordinates wrong, ended up in the heart of the African continent and was captured by hungry tribesmen who didn’t give a tapir's ass about his claims that he was an Indian deity? (Given that it was so difficult to travel from one part of the globe to another in those days, surely even Gods must have had restraining orders.)
Anyway, there were no such concerns in this episode. The sudarshan chakra/UFO adeptly locates north India, floats down, takes a quick left turn from the main palace, reaches the scene of the action and hovers above the heads of the characters as they look up in astonishment. Then – again, remember, this isn’t a spoof – lengthy quantities of sari flow down from it to ensure that Draupadi remains well-clad even as Duhshasana tugs away at her garment. As if it isn't difficult enough to put on a sari the conventional way...no wonder the poor woman wanted the wholesale destruction of the human race.
Draupadi’s sari didn't unravel but the story of the great epic definitely will, over the next 5,000 or so episodes, in Ekta's loving hands. I’ll watch it whenever time allows and provide commentary now and again.
Ekta Kapoor’s soon-to-be-telecast production of the Mahabharata (retitled Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharat Ki, kyunki “K” ka hona zaroori hai) promises to change the landscape of mythological serials in much the same way that her daily dramas transformed how we look at Indian families. Some predictions for what we can expect to see on this new show:
– In a case of inventive rewriting, the character of Bhishma, the grand old man who shows more longevity than most of his great-great-grandchildren, will be turned into a woman and played by the actress who enacted the role of the timeless Ba in Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. This will save the casting directors some trouble.
– Each of Draupadi’s five weddings will be shown in loving detail, over several weeks, with a budget of Rs 200 crore set aside exclusively for the costumes.
– Dramatic twists will abound. During a teary family showdown, it will transpire that Dhritarashtra’s blindness was caused by the cumulative glare from the necklaces worn by the women in his family. After the failure of the vastra-haran attempt, it will be revealed that Draupadi, being a dutiful wife, was wearing all five of her wedding saris at the time. ("No wonder she looks so fat," Duhshasana will remark, causing Bhima to swear the fearsome oath that he will catch hold of Duhshasana one day and force-feed him bean sprouts.)
– There will be at least one cat-fight between Draupadi and Subhadra, with chiffon and jewellery flying about the palace and an emasculated Arjuna watching nervously from a corner of the room. The number of speedy zoom-ins and zoom-outs in this scene will break all previous records for daytime soaps and the episode will win a special achievement prize at a Balaji Telefilms awards show.
– One of the features of an Ekta Kapoor soap is the ostentatious piety of the characters (that is, when they aren’t busy conniving to destroy each others’ lives). This is most notable in scenes where family members gather at the puja room together, fold their hands and moist-eyedly sway their heads in unison as celestial music plays on the soundtrack. In Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharat Ki, where one of the key characters is God Himself, this sort of behaviour will cause serious disruptions in the plot. Each time Krishna enters a room, everyone will stand in a line and start singing bhajans loudly. These scenes will buy the scriptwriters a few weeks’ time to plan the next plot twist.
– Unfortunately, the censor board will disallow the scene where Krishna and his family fold their hands and sway piously in front of statues of the Kapoor family.
– Wherever possible, sentences will begin with “K” words. For instance, when Satyavati is asked why her son, the vagrant scribe, doesn’t live with her in the palace, she will reply, “Kyunki Vyas bhi kabhi sadhu tha.”
– There will be unexpected promotional guest appearances at crucial points. Midway through the episode showing the death of Abhimanyu, Tusshar Kapoor will appear onscreen to announce the forthcoming release of his new film ChakraView.
– Though the Mahabharata war lasted 18 days, it will take six years’ worth of episodes to telecast, because of the Principle of Reaction Shots, crucial to any Balaji serial. Each time a character shoots an arrow at another, we will be shown reaction shots of every man, horse, elephant and vulture on the battlefield. These scenes will make the pace of Ramanand Sagar’s soporific Ramayana comparable to that of an Indiana Jones film.
– The arrows will, of course, travel in slow motion; the more important ones like the Brahmastra will take at least four episodes to reach their target. But since the weapons will be dressed in colourful saris, viewers won’t mind.
It is said of the Mahabharata that “what is not here is nowhere to be found”. The tagline for Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharat Ki will be “what is here is nowhere else to be found”.