Tulsi Zindabad in Afghanistan

If you thought that the “saas-bahu” serials,which despite their misrepresentation of women are a rage only in India, you were seriously mistaken.
Don’t telephone an Afghan at 8.30 in the evening. That’s when the Indian TV soap opera Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, dubbed into Dari, is telecast on Tolo TV, and no one wishes to miss it. It’s the most popular television show in Afghan history, considered directly responsible for a spike in the sale of generator sets and even for absences from religious functions which clash with its broadcast times.(TOI )

The fever there is almost similar to what it was in India a few years back. UN Undersecretary of state Shashi Tharoor reports from the Sunday Times(dated 28th Jan,2007)“Kyunki has so thoroughly captured the public imagination in Afghanistan that, in this deeply conservative Islamic country where family problems are usually hidden behind the veil, it’s an Indian TV show that has come to dominate society’s discussion of family issues. I have read reports of wedding banquets being interrupted so that the guests could huddle around the television for half-an-hour, and even of an increase in crime at 8:30 pm because watchmen are sneaking a look at the TV rather than minding the store. One Reuters dispatch recounted how robbers in Mazar-i-Sharif stripped a vehicle of its wheels and mirrors recently during the telecast time and wrote on the car, in an allusion to the show’s heroine, Tulsi Zindabad“.

So despite there bring an Orkut Community called I Hate Ekta Kapoor consisting of 51,384 members and growing everyday,we can still be thankful to her for bringing together a community that has suffered years of strife. Well if she could only improve the content of her sitcoms and not depict most Indian women as evil and master conspirators, we would watch her shows without hating her,and it’s here where the irony lies. We watch what we hate, and can’t stand missing out on a single episode either.Sorry Ekta but there ain’t gonna be any Tulsi Zindabad in India anytime soon.

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posted by krisdhingra in Random Events |