Rave To The Grave

So went a popular song from the 90's with Prabhu Deva and Kushboo. Forget for a moment that the song's double entendre is lost in translation and focus on the first 2 words of the song. Any kid growing up in the 90's who wasn't "one of those sick spoiled privileged kids who grew up watching Small Wonder or The Wonder years on Star Plus" , instead had to pick and choose between DD 1 and DD2 - The Metro Channel.

Now The Metro Channel had kind of an interesting concept, at least down south in Chennai where I grew up. They would take these hindi shows and simply tack on literally-translated Tamil dialogues involving the same set of voices for every show. Honestly, although you had your moments of annoyance, they were kind of fun. Our very own desi soap operas.

Here are some of the shows, with whatever I remember of them. Feel free to add your own bits.

This was probably the most popular show of them all. As I remember it was broadcast Thursday nights, and then maybe on Tuesday and Thursday nights at about 8:30. Primetime, if you will. Due to the literal-translation-bug (LTB) , the following happened off.

a) Keshav Kalshi/Khalsi/Khalsihi/Whatzislastname became Kesava

b) Chacha Nagarkar or whatizname became THATHA Nagarkar. I still distinctly remember the "THATHA!!! Inga enna nadakkudhu" [Grandfather, what is going on here?] to which THATHA Nagarkar replies "Ada adhu onnum illa Kesava. " [That is nothing Kesav-boy]

c) Adhikari Saab became Adigari sir. Adhikari is probably the guy's last name in the hindi version, but in Tamil adigari literally means supervisor/enforcer. So he's now 'Supervisor Sir'.

d) Aditya Dhanaraj became Aaditta Dhanraj "Panakkara Naiye" [Rich Dog] , as mentioned periodically by his arch rival Sumer (!?) Rajvansh.

e) Mini Agarwal's dad , the old coot in the wheel char was simply 'Agarwal Sir'. Mini Agarwal was the troubled daughter, and also I might add, pretty cute. If I remember she was involved with Kesava at one point but cleaned up her act and married this other guy that I can't remember.

Anyway the story went something like this: Aaditta Dhanraj is this rich bloke and has some sort of feud with Sumer Rajvansh. I think Sumer coveted Aaditta Dhanraj's wife Seema at some point and this might have led to the bitterness. However I am not sure. Their families feud as well. Kesava is some kind of capo in a crime family headed by THATHA Nagarkar. Duryodhan (or the dude who played Duryodhan in Mahabharata - I forget his name) is this blind(ing) old dude who's the head of another crime family, to whom for some reason THATHA submits to. Then there's this guy - Manish Mahajanu who keeps referring to himself in the third person. Some kind of traitor who used to work for Sumer but the last I saw, was hiding out in a factory somewhere. Anyway this is all I remember. I'm sure I can find the complete story online somewhere but I don't really care. If some reader wants to fill in the missing pieces, go right ahead.

I still remember a part of the title song for Pidivadham, sung by Hariharan if I'm not mistaken.

Then there were the other shows.

So there's this bloke played by Aloknath. He's got two daughters. I think the 2nd one was called Kiran and very cute. The first one was played by Renuka Shahane if I remember. The dad bloke is very rich and everybody's having a nice life when he passes away. Danny Dezongpa (Chatterjee was the character's name I think) is the dad bloke's friend/partner who swindles all their money leaving the 2 daughters to fend for themselves. I don't remember how the story goes after that but there are a lot of close up shots of Kiran's pretty face.

End of story.

The title song went something like this:

The title character was played by the bloke who played Karna in Mahabharat (After such a big show ended, I suppose the entire cast was flooding the TV Soap market. I think Adhigari saar from Pidivadham played Vidhura in Mahabharat).

Anyway this Karna bloke is a lawyer. That's all I remember. There was some kind of fiery firestorm of a story brewing but I cannot recall what it was about. A lot of close up shots of Karna-bloke's bloodshot eyes (I prefer Kiran's, from Kismat). He was for some reason always dressed in white, even out of the courtroom.

On to the next

Danny Dezongpa plays the title character here. I don't remember the story at all but it was some kind of spy/military story with a lot of bombs blowing up, treachery, traitors and DD involved in a lot of espionage. I don't remember any cute female characters/actresses from this one. Just a lot of bombs. I do remember that it was kind of exciting...in its own way.

I think these were the main primetime shows that I can recall. There were a couple of afternoon soaps as well.

No idea wtf this was about. Something about a girl's relationship with her in-laws maybe? I don't know - I don't care.

Apna version and answer to such soaps as The Bold and The Beautiful and Guiding Light. It was on in the afternoon (I think) although I don't remember watching a single episode. What I do remember though are the promos they ran. It had Milind Soman in it (and remember those were the days when the Milind Soman-Madhu Saphre TUFFS shoe ads were fresh in everybody's minds , as indeed was that fortunate python which got to crawl to never-before-seen places, but enough about that). It also had a few other actors/actresses who were unknown (atleast to me, haha). Here's the kicker though - IT WAS IN ENGLISH!!

Yes indeed. A very daring move by DD to give us a desi soap in English, complete with terribly faux-voiced accents and stale shit acting. People sounded like they were talking in Hindi -except the words sounded like the Scottish version.

The promos went something like this:

Earth

Wind

Rain

Fire

(WOW)

Wealth

Power

Blood

Desire

(WOW WOW)

Cut to: Some 40+ auntie-former babe talking in Inglipis with really the worst soap-opera-face ever seen on television "WHAT HAPPENED 13 YEARS AGO WITH THE MISTAKE...DAMMIT!!"

To this day I don't know what the mistake was, that happened 13 years ago, but I do know it was not a mistake to never have watched this show.

The title doesn't even make any sense. A MOUTHFUL of sky? WHAT!?

Special Mention: Superhit Muquabla/Potti

Honestly, this was probably the best show they had. It was on Sunday nights, so you had one last shot at hanging on to your weekend before the 'case of the Mondays' the next morning. Even to this day, some of my favorite shows are the Sunday night shows (Thanks to Entourage, Sunday nights really really kick ass. Or that other thing, if you watched the 'Malibooty' episode.) Anyway, superhit potti was a show where they show you 2 seconds of commercials with a 30 second break in-between for a new song, from a new movie. They had different anchors/VJ's for every show, almost. S0metimes you had movie stars come on and present a show (The show where Shahrukh Khan came on was probably the best show - he made it really funny AND he was talking in tamil. Can you believe that). They also showed you old songs. Then they had a contest at the end of the show - usually about a song in one particular position, for it was a countdown show. The top 10 or 5 songs or something like that.

I think Baba Sehgal came on once and sang what would later become its showcase title song.

=
Super super super HITTU POTTIYE HITTU POTTIYE HITTU POTTIYE (*4)

Anybody remember any other shows?