Naari power zindabaad!
Diya Aur Bati Hum; Afsar Bitiya
Aaj kal jaise Bharatiya naari par atyachaar ho rahe hain na, lagta hai ki pralay aane wala hai. The only way to stop this is to have more and more ladies join gorment services. So surely, I thought, our TV channels, who really worry about the girl child and women’s rights and plight, must be doing their two-bits to enlighten and uplift. They are, I was told. Diya Aur Bati Hum (Star Plus), according to the official spiel, is about Sandhya who wants to be an IPS officer, but is married into a halwai family and must now try and fulfil her dreams. And Afsar Bitiya (Zee TV), I was informed, is about a poor but upright father’s pyaari beti Krishna who changes her taqdeer by becoming BDO (block development officer), that too in Bihar.
Wah! Excited, I decided to check these out.
Afsar Bitiya’s Krishna, is an honest but sad girl who has become BDO despite her completely passive approach to life. Every time someone so much as throws a flimsy thread in her direction, she stops in her tracks, apologises and retires to her room to sob. Her father valiantly tries to protect her, but sulky Krishna doesn’t really lend him a hand.
And now that Krishna is BDO with an official car, she devotes most of her time getting worked up about one Pintuji. Pintuji loves Krishna and Krishna loves Pintuji, but both take so many episodes just to say this that I kept wondering if that’s what is stalling the electrification of our villages — smitten BDOs wringing their hands to squeeze out “I love you”. Afsar Krishna, sadly, is the equivalent of the clichéd women drivers: Slow, scared, bumbling and holding up traffic.
Fed up, I turned to Diya Aur Bati Hum's Sandhya, the soon-to-be IPS officer. That day her sasural was supposed to be celebrating Gangaur, but instead there was hahakar in the house of halwais because the ladoos that had arrived from Sandhya’s family, all the way from America, had broken and turned into a flaming red halwa. Neighbourhood Rottweiler aunties came sniffing trouble and growled at the bikhre-bikhre ladoos. Even her halwai husband, Sooraj, started shouting at the phoote ladoo, saying these ladoos were an insult to all halwais.
Any moment now, I thought, Sandhya will take out her 9 mm pistol, strike a deadly pose and start shooting the ladoos. But no. Sandhya, with pallu covering her head, stood shame-faced, with tears in her eyes, enduring the cheer-haran. Bus, aisi hi IPS officers ki zaroorat hai hamare desh ko.
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