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Witerati | The Mirror Crack’d from Bride to Bride
The humble Bumblebee can now hope for its fifteen minutes of fame. For the sake of a possible dramatic debut on big screen or small screen, Ms Bumblebee could even contemplate slaying it by getting itself that same lip job
The saas-bahu sob opera over the ₹30,000-crore fortune of late industrialist Sunjay Kapur may have gifted scriptwriters much to amuse and muse for a masala Bollywood or OTT script, and tamasha TV blokes their “barking news” bulletins for the coming months.
Soap opera or sob opera-ish headlines have thus already been flying forth like tantalising teasers for OTT. “Saas Bahu Aur Sona”, “Clash of the Queens” and so on.
“Life imitates art” may be a cliche as overexposed as a Sunny Leone or Kim Kadarshian cleavage, but it’s nonetheless not about to be dumped by directors and scriptwriters.
What with rumours of Bollywood filmmakers even finding inspiration for a flick or web series in the recent infamous honeymoon murder at Meghalaya, real life is offering oodles of new drama and melodrama for reel life.
What with new twists and turns being added to the Sona Comstar saas-bahu feud for fortune, starring real-life protagonists Rani Kapur and Priya Sachdev, the story has begun to look like a jugalbandi of genres. Shades of a dynastic drama. Shades of an Agatha Christie cosy countryside murder mystery. Shades of a James Bond-esque global spy thriller.
Cameo calling
The only thing that lends this script a first-of-its-kind USP is a humble entity -- a never-before cameo by Ms Bumblebee.
So far Bumblebees were figuring on big screen and small screen in rather oblique roles and references. As the bumblebee pouts of botoxed Bollywood babes.
The humble Bumblebee can now hope for its fifteen minutes of fame. For the sake of a possible dramatic debut on big screen or small screen, Ms Bumblebee could even contemplate slaying it by getting itself that same lip job. To live up to its reputation of possessing inflammatory personality traits that cause tinsel town’s pouts to bulge like the bulbs of a lily.
There have of late been web series inspired from dynastic dramas. They boast all frills, finery and follies that inhabit ivory towers of the haut monde.
Sample this series, “The Royals”. Apparently inspired from the royals of Jaipur, it is set in a fictional royal estate of Morpur.
It also borrows shades from scions of royalty in other states. It mounts royalty on neon-luminescent, bubblegum-bright collages that drip diamonds to debts, secrets and scandals to situationships. And much more in Morpur.
Dynastic dramas
Ah, but the prism of fluorescence and flamboyance for this dynastic drama, as also similar web series, would pale pitiably in front of a Sona saas-bahu script.
What “The Royals” boasts is broadly 2D -- diamonds to debts. Where a Sona saas-bahu-inspired script could promise an exalted edge is entertainment that is 3D --- diamonds, death, diabolic boardroom takeovers.
On a serious note, this whole Sona saas-bahu feud has also exposed the farce that are the so-called “blended families” of the haut monde.
Status update-ism and selfie-ism have spawned a rash of portraits that boast blended families. For public consumption, biwis or bachchas from previous marriages are merrily paraded on social media as the Big Fat Blended Family Portrait.
Among the conspicuous portraits that come to mind is of the Salim Khan-Salman family -- Both biwis and bahut bachchas.
Blended family portraits are the new vocabulary of the digital age. The Sona Comstar saga too tosses up the blended family portrait -- previous biwi Karisma Kapoor and her bachchas rubbing shoulders with Sunjay Kapur’s new biwi with her new bachcha plus bachcha from previous marriage and so on.
Poof! Out of the window goes the blended family portrait when a ₹30,000 crore fortune is at stake!
Fortune’s feud has made a farce of it.
To edge others out of the blended family portrait, Sachdev was quick to drop her maiden surname and adopt Sunjay Kapur’s name on Instagram profile. Like mother like daughter. Her daughter dropped the biological father’s surname in favour of the fortune-owning foster father’s name.
What image influencers didn’t perhaps advise the diva about is this -- if the mother-daughter’s name change had happened when Kapur was alive, it would have lent the blended family portrait a golden glow. But when it happens after a fortune feud breaks out, then it imbues the blended family portrait shades of a gold-digging row.
Were a web series to be made on this dynastic drama, one wonders about the cast. Karisma may be the natural choice for her reel role based on real role of Ex Factor. The million-dollar question is --- who would be best suited for the role of fortune-feuding biwi?
The curious case of “Phir Bhi Thrill Hai Hindustani”.
chetnakeer@yahoo.com
