D E L V I N G D E E P E R

The Two Worlds

Ihave noticed that Ekta Kapoor’s movies are as different as they can be from her teleserials. The teleserials Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kyoki Saas Bhi Kahbi Bahu Thi deal with marriage, divorce, affairs—the politics of the household. The movies by far have nothing to do with home or family values. Kucch To Hai attempted to be a horror film, while Kya Kool Hai Hum was a comedy full of double entendres about a pair of wannabes seeking their fortune in the city.
Except for the titles starting with ‘K’ there is little to suggest that the two sets of products come from the same source—Ekta Kapoor, her mom and her production house, Balaji Telemovies. The women in the K-teleserials wear traditional gaudy outfits. The characters are relentlessly scheming, manipulative and crooked. By contrast, the protagonists in the K-movies are young, dressed in modern outfits, relatively gawky, naive and endearing.
Different segments are being catered to. The K-teleserials are directed at women inside the house who control the remote and hence the viewing habits of the family, thereby asserting their power. The K-movies are directed at college kids who are outside the house, experimenting with newfound freedom, looking for adventure, an alternative from the stifling rules of the house.
The content seeks to satisfy different needs. The K-teleserials focus on frustrations and yearnings of housewives. The K-movies indulge the hopes and dreams of the youth. The former is dominated by women struggling to be
beautiful, attractive, traditional, yet in touch with the times. The latter is dominated by men pretending to be cool and modern. The former is inward looking. The latter is outward looking. The former is regressive. The latter is progressive. The former struggles hard to reinforce traditional hierarchies. The latter seeks the unattainable.
Either Ekta Kapoor has a fantastic market research team or she possesses a great intuition. Not all
her products may be successful, but what is fascinating is the direction she is taking. She knows, intuitively or otherwise, that in every culture there exists an inside world of hierarchies and traditions and an outside world of horizons and revolutions. The former is controlled by the backward-looking older generation. The latter is aspired for by the forward-looking younger generation. There is an eternal struggle between the two and it is difficult to resolve the conflicts therein.
Of all places, Tamil sangam classical literature dated 300 AD acknowledges the existence of these two cultural spaces. You have Akam poetry which focuses on the idea of romance and love and Puram poetry which focuses on heroism, kingship and war. The K-teleserials are like Akam, complex and internalised, focussing on the emotional landscape of women and men, where one has to contend with infidelity and unrequited love. The K-movies are like Puram, straightforward and externalised, focussing on the world at large, the world where one has to triumph over enemies and demons and ghosts and warriors. Together, they capture the landscape of Indian men and women in the early part of the 21st century a period in time when to cope with the threat of increasing globalisation many seek the comfort of archaic social values.
Interestingly, members of the inner world and the outer world are obsessed with the same thing—sex and money. The K-teleserial women fight over the men just as the K-movie boys run after the girls. The K-teleserial families fight over inheritance, while the K-movie boys seek their fortune. Sex and money remain the driving forces of the inner and outer worlds. Beneath these driving forces is insecurity forged by unpredictability and impermanence of all things worldly.
Indian philosophy offers a solution to this common problem of the inner and outer worlds renunciation. But that is one space, I suspect, Ekta Kapoor does not wish to venture either in serials or in movies. Not yet at least. Not when the profits of the inner and outer worlds await harvesting.