Serial killers

Hindi serials and soaps go through cycles and phases: the saas-bahu period, for instance, has now been succeeded by feudal-rustic sagas. But some core concepts endure. The character of the malevolent matriarch is one such staple, whether clad in synthetic sarees with artfully grey-streaked hair or in faux-ethnic ensembles.

She is the lynchpin of every household drama, relentlessly tormenting a gaggle of pusillanimous offspring and their lachrymose spouses. The sudden leap of protagonists from childhood to carefully-coiffed adulthood is another inevitability in that world.

The sameness creeping into storylines — with lead characters even leeching into each other’s serials on the same channel — and inadequate attention to detail need to be remedied forthwith. If the main players are not being set upon or kidnapped by bad guys or being sidelined and ill-treated by crafty relatives, they invariably are shot, poisoned or, at the very least, laid low by remarkably-reversible comas or bouts of amnesia. Not only do scriptwriters show an astonishing lack of diversity when it comes to ailments, they display an even more abysmal ignorance of medical procedures.

Dr Abraham Verghese may well exhort medical students at Stanford University to go back to old-fashioned practices such as physical examination of patients, but he would hardly recommend treating poisoning with an oxygen mask, gunshot wounds with an injection and amnesia with a stethoscope.

For pointers, Hindi scriptwriters should watch hospital dramas on English channels. Given the country’s billion-plus population, the lack of hubbub in Hindi serialville is also curious. The incongruous absence of flunkeys and domestic staff in garishly-lavish homes, leaves bejewelled bahus to open doors and tend to kitchens. Perhaps a cadre of rotating extras for these roles could be shared by the serials for authenticity’s sake.