Indian daily soaps seldom make much sense, but they are always brilliant for a good laugh. Here are some of the overly repeated storylines that defy all logic!
1. Fates communicate in weird ways, having a direct line to our TV soap family’s home. A breeze snuffing out the diya or a pooja thaali dropping is a sure shot signal of imminent, inevitable death. A death simply cannot occur without some sort of “apshagun” happening first.
2. The “adarsh bahus” have to, just have to wear kurtas and sarees. If a character is in jeans, you can bet your money that they’ll be turning evil pretty soon, if they’re not already.
3. The sanskaar factor is directly proportional to the length of your clothes and inversely proportional to the amount of makeup on your face (because negative characters usually go overboard with their’s).
4. It’s perfectly normal to wear ridiculous amounts of jewelry while sleeping. Also, what the hell are PJs?!
5. The heroine meets a douche who is a rude, disrespectful jerk of a man… it’s only natural they fall in love!
6. The best solution to every kind of problem is obviously a contract marriage with the person you can’t stand.
7. A picture frame breaking definitely means that there are relationship problems going on. Or that there has been an accident.
8. And then that accident will surely lead to partial amnesia, or God forbid, plastic surgery! Also, remember when the diya died and the pooja thaali fell earlier? The death that they signaled might not have been a death at all, and the character could return with a new face, body and voice, claiming they had plastic surgery!
9. One minute the family is filthy rich, until they lose their property to the villain (or vamp!). Then they’ll suddenly move into a one bedroom set, and starve… because they obviously have never heard of things like savings bonds or mutual fund investments!
10. There simply must come a point in every daily soap marriage when the protagonists hate each other. If all goes well, one of them will definitely end up in jail!
11. It must be a daily soap law that stipulates the heroine to trip and fall smack into the hero’s arms… and then they just stare into each other’s eyes while an entire song plays in slow motion in the background. Oh and, Holi is never complete without the heroine getting drunk and stupid on bhaang.
12. If it seems like all’s finally well, and everybody is happy, you can be sure there is a generation leap coming your way. Because of course a show must never ever end. Daily soaps are forever, so it makes total sense to just fast forward it 20 years into the future and introduce new characters! Somehow though, the technology and fashion trends remain pretty much the same as they were 20 years ago. Go figure.
