Random Observations of an idle man lost in the labyrinth of Saas-Bahu Serials

Vacations are no doubt every man’s desire, but a really long holiday can become a pain, especially when you have nothing to do. Few would realize my pain, sitting in front of the Television sets aptly named idiot box, from 10-6 and watching the same news again and again and again. I cede the control of the idiot box to my mom in the evenings, who watches these hopeless soaps of the ‘Ekta Kapoor’ fame. With literally nothing to do, I too have to sit through the ordeal, during which I made some of the most bizarre observations:

1.       Every soap has so many unwanted twists that it’s impossible to figure out what the original story line was. (Instead of twist in a story, the story is entire story seems twisted).

2.       Without fail there is a character in every serial, mostly likely female, who is incarnation of Sati Savitri. She will be presented throughout as an epitome of Bhartiye naari. She will bear all kinds of domestic violence and cruelties quietly for months and even years until suddenly she becomes the embodiment of Goddess Durga.

3.       What’s the point in having a resolute hero, if there is no villain? So, each soap inadvertently has to have a devil, generally male but lately fair sex can also be seen, whose only job seems to me is to plot against the lead character. These plots, read shadyantras, are so overtly complex that sometimes I feel why can’t our intelligence agencies use their services for unraveling the conspiracies?

4.       Irrespective of the social standings in the serial, every female character is loaded with tones of jewelry all times, even when they are to sleep, an omnipresent,  large sized mangal sutra hanging down their necks like a noose, an overdose of sindoor in maang and lastly high heeled footwear. I actually wonder how people shown, in the soap, living in mud houses afford such expensive jewelry and even absurd is the idea of wearing them 24x7. Frankly, I am confused that how many females wear high heeled shoes instead of casual slippers in their homes?

5.    

            The males, in these soaps, are even more overtly dressed. Lately the trend has been extensively embroidered long kurtas. Phew! I tried the same, but sincerely I would never give up the comfort of Tees and shorts, for such things.

6.      

      Another amazing fact of these soaps is they rarely conclude in less than 3-4 years. Most of them meet the fate of being booted out when their TRP’s hit the rock bottom. I wish I would ever watch a serial end gracefully. 

Weekends!! Why Saturday and Sunday only??

I have been idling at my home for quite some time and my not so good health is not permitting me to venture out frequently. An empty mind is a devil’s workshop and probably few would realize it better than me. With absolutely nothing to do, some weird thoughts are bound to cross my mind and one such thought that tickled my feather of thought was why weekends mean only Saturday and Sunday? Why can’t other days of the week be made into regular week offs? 

The source of this weirdo is the recent initiative of the Tamil Nadu courts to run family courts on Saturdays and Sundays so as to help working professionals to fight family court cases. One of the reasons for this initiative was the spurt in the number of family disputes (read matrimonial disputes and divorce pleas). While this shows that matches are not made in heaven, but the point of interest for me was the working on so called weekends.

I sincerely feel that this initiative should be extended to other offices too. Rather than having Saturday and Sunday as weekly holidays, we can make a particular day in week holiday for a particular department. Pondering over this I came across some ideas:

Welcoming the Tamil Nadu initiative, it would be better if the same is implemented across the entire judicial set up(Supreme Court, high courts, etc.) across the country. The courts can have weekend on Monday and Tuesday, enabling working people to avail judicial services on Saturday and Sundays.

Considering that state governments and union governments rarely agree on anything, it would better if union government sets aside different days as weekly offs. Starting with the financial institutions (read banks, stock exchanges) can enjoy their weekend on Wednesday while other central government offices can be closed on Thursdays and Fridays.

Idea of having any day of the week as holiday has many fold advantages. The working professionals will not have to take unwanted leaves from their works for just trifle works, resulting in increased productivity. Another aspect is even distribution of traffic ensuring that on Mondays roads are not overly crowded while on Sundays roads lie bare. 

No doubt that such a system would feel chaotic initially and may face stiff social acceptance challenges but over the time it might just prove to be vastly productive.

I don’t know whether this is a great idea or another absurd thought of an empty mind, but I wish to see it being implemented at least on trial basis.