When Bertolt Brecht formulated his thesis on the aesthetics of drama, he was thinking about Franz Kafka’s psychoanalytical shock technique, one that was also hopelessly romantic. But post-Piku, psychological dramas by Indian film and TV producers have also been courting a much greater sense of realism in them, too.
Besides discussions around rape crimes, which has been a dominant theme in books and films over the last few years, such as in the movie Pink and in the ongoing Star TV soap Amla Ka Kya Kasoor Tha, women-oriented themes are also being produced through the genre of the “situational drama”. Thanks to Deepika Padukone’s brilliant feminist performance in 2015 as the hot-headed Piku in Indian cinema, upcoming scriptwriters in television, film, and even theatre are now dealing with stories from every day life rather than merely mythical, fantastical, and mystical dream-visions, something that was the staple diet during the post-romantic period in literary publishing. Today’s “Indian realism” on the other hand, is bursting with a desire to tell the stories of its time for what they are.
REFLECTIONS
Devendra Arora on one of his sets
Devender Arora’s Aaina (Mirror), for instance, is a television soap on Anjan TV that blends situational realism with motivational philosophy, besides his other serial Shanti Ke Safar Mein (In the Journey for Peace), which is a travelogue based on interviews with people from across different cities. Peppered with talks by eminent personalities including peace ambassador Prem Rawat on how to cope with anger, stress, and the difficulties of everyday life, Arora’s fictionalized plots in Aaina deal with the real, everyday struggles in relationships, like the arguments between a husband and a wife and her in-laws, or with a man’s troubles at the workplace. Other episodes deal with themes as varied as time management and unconditional love.
“All my plots have a social message, and are geared at motivating people to live positively,” says Arora, who has been a producer of several lifestyle and health shows on television for the last two decades, having produced programmes for a variety of channels including NDTV and Doordarshan. “It’s very important for me to apply such a sense of social cause to the kind of scripts I write,” says Arora, who does not believe his work can be merely art for art’s sake.
“Like the title suggests, what we aim to provide to society is a mirror to it,” says actor Srestha Banerjee, who has already starred in the lead role of two of Arora’s Aaina episodes till date and even collaborated on several of the scripts with him. “We are not dealing with hard violence or crime so much in the serial, as the day to day problems of life, including the need to combat negativity and resolve tensions,” she says.
“Often, one tends to think negatively even though things are working out absolutely fine, for instance,” she says.
BREAKTHROUGHS
In the fourth episode on June 30, titled “Ups and Downs” for instance, Banerjee plays the wife to a man who was undergoing a difficult patch at work, and motivates him to sail past his difficulties. In the next one, which was the ninth episode on August 4 titled “Goodness and Evil”, Banerjee is a newly married wife who is at the receiving end of her husband and mother-in-law’s ire and continuous insults, which they resolve when her husband’s own sister makes a surprise visit. Banerjee believes that female-centric character roles of the kind that she is now playing is where her heart really lies. “I do not want to compromise on the content,” says Banerjee, who is a graduate of English Literature.
Like her, several other artists, including Deepak Qazir Kejriwal of the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro fame, are tired of seeing what they see on the popular channels and are seeking change, something that the commissioning of more such psychological dramas may eventually create. “With web shows and so many other competitive challenges, I think we need a massive re-haul in terms of content if we want our TRPs to go up again,” he says, adding that he is waiting for the right projects to come up before committing himself anywhere right now.
