This is with reference to your thought-provoking editorial ‘Indian women breathes with daily TV soaps’ (AV, August 10). It is true that watching TV serials is the most favourite pastime of Indian women, especially the housewives. Once they are done with cooking dinner, they eagerly look forward to watching their favourite TV serials. But most serial makers unfortunately take the Indian housewives – their target audience – for granted, by serving them stuff, meant for brainless folks. Most of TV serials aired nowadays portray a society that does not exist, at least not within the territorial boundaries of the Republic of India. There is room for traditional family values in them. Characters in these serials are not satisfied with their married life and are, therefore, in a perennial search of a paramour. Female characters are depicted as scheming against their saas bahus or others. Highly bejewelled and clad in designer sarees, they are in an intriguing mode 24×7.
Notwithstanding the claim of not encouraging an institution like child marriage, the serials like Balika Vadhu resort to its glorification with an eye on the much coveted TRPs. The Pehredaar Piya Ki has crossed all limits of decency by showing a minor boy with a bride, double his age, on honeymoon. Such serials are bound to have ill-effects on the impressionable minds of kids, as watching TV is a family affair in India. Such serials court controversies, as the sociologists fear a disturbing trend in TV scene of the nation. Controversies, as the past records testify, bring dividends to unscrupulous serial makers. Although they claim to make a different serial, in reality, they create controversies for their insatiable hunger for TRPs.
The housewives who do not want their kids to watch such TV serials must first exercise self-restraint. They must bid adieu to such shows for good.
Samiul Hassan Quadri
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
