By Jaya Dubey
Fed up with the saas-bahu drama on TV, but can’t look away? Bummed out that our desi soaps want you to hate all things female?
Do you ever wish that someone would repackage your chulbuli heroine and akdu hero into a more progressive narrative where saasu mas are sweet and don’t halt suhaag raats? Do you dream of sending those omniscient vamps to jail when their demonic saazish backfires on them? Ever wish someone would give the men a few speaking parts, at least on Mondays?
That used to be me. Then one day I stopped wishing and started writing.
Today, I am in the middle of Chapter 134 of my fan fiction based on a Zee TV show. Side note: the show ended last year. Yup, I am that dedicated. So, how did this happen? How does a feminist turn into a desi-soap revisionist?
The year was 2013.
Twenty plus years of feminism had rendered me immune to daily soaps. Sort of. I still sneak-surfed through Indian dramas for laughs at purple sofas, submissive bindanis and bahus, and ever-convenient humshakals. That shrieking saas in Saath Nibhaana Saathiya, who demands, “chaas mein Phenyl kisne milaya?” was comedy gold. I grew savvier at recognising contrary tropes of never-ending pregnancies and deferred suhaag raats. I snarked at soap moms policing their sons’ sexuality. How could I not? Good is stunningly dumb, and evil triumphant, in these laboratories of chauvinism. Dramatic action unfolds in slow motion; eternity is shorter. Tense close-ups accompany background choruses of crescendoing NEE-NEE SA-SA RE-RE notes.
On some days though, it wasn’t that easy to sneer at the endless carnivals of Bappas, Mata ranis and Sri Krishnas, who remained blind to unholy deeds. There were weekly human sacrifices of Sati Savitris. Brand new fasts, unheard-of rituals here, spilled milk, snuffed diyas there. The toxic blend of faux sanskaar and sabhyata continued to endanger female agency in these stories. Woman-on-woman violence (real and psychological) is the connective tissue of the format.
As a ‘good’ feminist, I flipped channels when the anti-women messaging amped up. In the land of real-life sati, dowry-burnings, and acid attacks, daytime TV still ambushes women through agni-parikshas and leaky kitchen stoves. Poisons and acids in makeup or mehendi continue to multiply. Desi mean girls do the dirty work of patriarchy: setting up frenemies to be kidnapped, tortured, raped or forcibly married to brutes. They merrily orchestrate rivals’ murders by fire, electrocution, free-falls or car ‘accidents.’
Buff soap hunks flashing their six-pack abs and shaved chests feed this ecosystem. The hero’s job (besides never going to office to manage his business empire) is to look pained and stay mum when mum screeches at parties. The party is a must: a basic set-up for a maha-episode of compulsory hysteria and bahu-flaying. It’s all so efficient; you can bitch-slap multiple heroines in one fairy-lit episode.
I was so busy cackling over these treadmills of insta-love and hate, mass-produced romance blended with gharelu-values, that I didn’t notice when I fell for one particular daily show.
I fell hard.
It was a new year. I was undone by two things that January of 2013: Merlot, and the lead couple on Qubool Hai (Season 1, 2012-2016). The heroine was fierce and chulbuli, the hero chiseled and akdu. Of course there were the familiar contrivances: they hated one another yet kept falling into each other’s arms, flashes of six-pack abs, eye sex… But the acting was Masha’ allah! The female lead was a giggle-factory who wouldn’t be quelled no matter how much he glared or yelled; her wacky shayari and hopeless klutziness was the perfect foil to his dark rage. Between their multiple dimples and battle of wits I was a goner. In my defence, the dialogues were great and their chemistry off the charts. Here was, I thought, something fresh.
I should’ve known better. Four months into a decent-ish storyline, the show plunged into an abyss of anti-women conspiracies. The elves of misogyny emerged from the wings to hijack a show that coulda been a contender.
Something snapped. I wanted to scream and howl, talk to somebody. But to someone I knew? Nah, how embarrassing! So I did what I’d never done before: I went looking online for a space to vent.
And I found it right on the show’s homepage. Into this rabbit hole I dropped to share my complaints: please, can the makers not cave in to clichés? Can they please not make the businessman hero so dumb that he can’t see evil under his aquiline nose? Can they pretty please not ruin this kickass female character I’d never before encountered in my soap tourism?
I found many groupies there with similar gripes. These people had seen previous shows by the same producers. Together, we went on to the production house’s website to rant and cuss. And get blocked. The moderators scolded us for being opinionated and catty. We returned with proxy accounts to continue raging.
We still watched the show hoping for redemption and sure that our feedback would have some effect on the writers and creatives. They would see the light and concede that our demands were completely logical, right?
The forum commenters were predominantly female. Lured by feminism’s promise that our voices mattered, we vented with confidence. We forged bonds of sisterhood there, unaware of being unwitting participants in a scripted performance. Viewers of the producers’ previous show, Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon, had also voiced similar complaints. At one point, the producers had even solicited ideas on the forum under the guise of “improving content.” My cohorts had submitted reams of proposals. Much later these writers alleged that the makers had used some of their ideas in the production house’s new show. Our off-screen catfights in this controlled space, which owned all content, must have its own entertainment value. Turns out, we were the idiots for not knowing the real bait-and-switch formulas. Despite years of soap-watching under my belt, I didn’t know that daytime TV celebrated marriage only to promote designer décor and clothes — an industry’s classic quid pro quo boosterism for others. We should’ve known that the real gods in soaps were the villains. That pavitra rishtas frayed, saat pheras remained interrupted, dolis were hijacked, and kasams were made to be broken.
The creatives kept writing their tired story and the show’s flirtation with misogyny soon escalated. Bad enough that the hero’s 18th century ideas of feminine modesty were seen as part of his hotness. But now the vamps on the show were resorting to serial torture.
Ranting on the forums stopped being therapeutic. So I emailed the BCCC (Broadcasting Content Complaints Council) three times, documenting scenes of elderly abuse, acid-laced mehendi and borderline domestic violence being promoted as sexual attraction. So did many other women. We even scored a win. Three months later, the channel was made to run a week-long apology scroll at the bottom of the screen saying they weren’t glorifying violence against women.
But the show’s content did not improve. What the makers did get better at were disclaimers: “This is for dramatic purposes only. The channel does not endorse any violence.”
For a while, viewers were led to believe that the leads would unite. We got countless pre-wedding ceremonies and dream sequences set to soulful Rahat Fateh Ali Khan songs. But the vamps kept vamping, my desi Lizzie Bennet squawked and lost, Mr. Darcy was ground-down to his rock-hard abs.
Yet I watched. Merlot in hand, I mourned the squandered promise of a once-smart show. And that did it. I had to step in. I had to write this show the way it should’ve been freaking written in the first place. By April of that year, I was re-writing. I took their story, united the leads, and by god, I made them think for themselves. These were smart characters. Why would they fall for laughable saazishes and not speak their minds? By August of 2013, I was publishing on portals like MyeDuniya and India Forums which host millions of rewriters!
Re-writing was cathartic. The hero in the original show never apologised for degrading the heroine. I made him grovel. Their female lead was dumbed-down for the hero to yell at. Mine was a mouthy goddess. My hero was showing growth too: he was more perceptive, becoming a feminist, even as his biceps rippled.
I made good in the story, wicked smart too. My characters got into trouble but they teamed up and got themselves out of it as well. I was weaving in my experiences (my daughter’s and husband’s as well). I was mashing in real life events on women’s rights, safety and empowerment. The feminist in me was now ascendant. She was not just having a good time. She was doing, I hope, some good work too.
My readers’ responses were headier than the Merlot. They loved narrative arcs on domestic violence, street harassment of women, sexual violence on college campuses — plenty from a social justice warrior’s toolkit. And not just armchair activism, I was weaving in love, foreplay, and sex. Yup, this was a romance fan fiction to begin with — erotica became its delicious spur. And what deferred suhaag raat? Dude, every other night was a suhaag raat. My readers ate it up. Here too I brokered subjects like female desire, consent, seduction, jealousy. The added bonus? Our sex life was spicing up much to my husband’s delight!
Fast forward to 2017 and I’m feeling a bit stuck: should Chapter 134 have more nok-jhonk, feisty spats and make-up sex? Or should I introduce a new action plot to spice up the drama, make him play Watson to her Sherlock, role-play Batman and Wonder Woman out of the sheets? Because some chapters are easier to write than others. Tear-jerker and love scenes are a breeze. But I struggle with getting the action sequences right.
So what’s next? End the story? Wasn’t this just a phase — a tic to get out of my system?
I don’t know. I’m having too much fun. Some readers are begging to see my version published as a book. Maybe I will. Maybe I can’t. I’m looking into it: reading up on copyright and fair use, researching the limits to fan-fiction publishing. After all, it would only be too tragicomic if I got sued! My soap adventures would come full circle, wouldn’t they — from akdu critic to self-made heroine of my own saga, now taken down by a big, bad soap syndicate? I’d be toast.
Cue NEE-NEE SA-SA RE-RE.