Representational Pic
Nagpur: A husband climbing the corporate ladder steadily. Has just been promoted as Senior Manager. Is suave, sophisticated and good looking. Lives in a plush apartment – probably self owned.
Has a girl friend who is cute, smart and knows how to tug at his heart – and purse- strings. She calls him ‘Baby’ and he calls her ‘bachcha’. Bachcha too works in the same office and the two are planning a ‘foreign holiday’ to celebrate his promotion.
So what’s the rub? Well, the fellow happens to be married and has a 5-6 years old son too.
So what’s new? These things happen… specially in metros or even small towns all over the country.
Well, the thing is, the wife is supposed to be from Nagpur – and hence does the following things:
- She dresses kind of shabbily, always wearing sarees with old fashioned blouses. No make up or modern hair dos.
- She keeps an impeccable house, but can cook only oily and very spicy food. (But the boss loves it, since his mother too was from Nagpur once upon a time).
- She has obviously lived in Mumbai since she got married, and has been raised NOT in a village but Nagpur yet she speaks a very rustic and kind of illiterate Marathi. For ‘why’ she says ‘Kaun?’ But she is still constantly chattering away, despite her accent, her ungrammatical sentences and her ‘dehati’ tone.
- And of course! She is a house wife – does not have a career or a life outside the home. Even sending her to do chores like paying bills or making insurance payments is reserved for times when the husband wants her out of the way.
This is Zee Marathi’s latest offering – “majhya navryachi bayko”. (My husband’s wife). They describe it as a ‘comedy’. This is what a promo says –
The popular Marathi chanell called Zee Marathi is now embarking with a new TV serial called Majhya Navryachi Bayko, which is all set to hit the channel on 22nd August. The TV serial has Abhijeet Khandkekar and Smita Gondkar in the lead roles, while a slew of others are playing supporting role in it.
The TV serial falls under comedy drama, which revolves around the husband and wife relationship.
Majhya Navryachi Bayko TV serial as said revolves around the life of a couple – husband wife and the family surrounding the two. The TV serial has many jovial moments and has been made in a light mode to entertain the Marathi audiences found within and outside the state. The promos released earlier are getting decent response, which has made a good amount of pre-release buzz in the media attracting the Marathi audience far and wide.
Well, we have news for you Zee TV, Marathi. We do not find the initial episodes funny at all because the jokes are at OUR expense! Nagpur girls are as smart, saucy and modern as any girl from any metro in the country. Young married women living in even smaller towns like Wardha or Amraoti, or even Warud, wear latest fashion kurtis and leggings – NOT sarees. And even our maid servants living in slums do not say ‘kaun’!!
So, its a comedy – why take it so seriously or literally, you will ask.
Because, viewers, specially in Western Maharashtra, Konkan, Marathwada etc. ( in short in rest of Maharashtra) form opinions about us in general after viewing such spiel.
A lady Doctor, who is a leading opthalmologist of the city, told me today that her daughter settled in New York was livid when a couple from Mumbai who they were entertaining at an exclusive club commented patronizingly “for a girl from Nagpur you speak very good English!” This Mumbai couple was not getting admission in the exclusive club, the Nagpur girl and her husband took them there and they return the favour by paying this left handed compliment?!
When my daughter went to do CA articleship in multinational PWC in Pune, some of our relatives there had asked ” will she be able to cope with and hold her own against the ‘smart’ Pune girls?” (She not only coped, but she passed all her CA exams in the first attempt, leaving many Pune girls by the way side!) Yet at an office ‘outing’ at Bombay she had to listen to this comment ” for a girl from Nagpur you are pretty cosmopolitan!”
Want to tell all these guys who think we are ‘gavathis’ living in the rural hinterland – Rukmini was a Vidarbha Princess! Prabhavati Gupta, daughter of Chandragupta Maurya was Regent and Royal queen of the Vatataka empire. Her mother was a royal Naga. Both hailed from Vidarbha.
If you want to go back any further, the beauteous and stunning Lopamudra who married Agatsya Muni and Damayanti, of Nal-Damyanti fame were also Vidarbha girls!!!
If you want more recent history, the Bhonsles of Nagpur came here at the invitation of a Gond queen and ruled at her pleasure, as HER guests…
So Zee, if you dont know all this – because you are based in Mumbai and are utterly ignorant! – do not demean us, patronize us and be condescending.
We are capable of filing a PIL and cutting short your stupid serial and turning the comedy into a tragedy….for YOU.
Be warned.
Sunita Mudaliar (Associate Editor)
