I prefer Lunar Eclipse. Review on Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand

~ Circa 2002 ~

On some Monday evening, a smart beautiful intelligent charming cute sweet (etc etc) girl visits her Sardarji landlords. After customary “Aao aao puttar, kee haal hein? Sab bhala changa?” the landlady takes her into the drawing room where a few auntyjis, daadijis, maasis, kudis, kiddos, one veerji and one dadaji have flocked around the TV set highly engrossed in a serial called Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand. And in the conversations that took place strictly during commercial breaks ONLY, following story was updated to the ignorant tenant who according to others had committed the gravest sin by not even being aware of this serial earlier.

Aruna Irani and her now-ok-but-soon-to-be-paralytic husband are London based Punjabi NRIs who live in a customary big joint family full of in-laws, friends, relatives, servants, dogs, cats, pigeons (ok, ignore the last few.. probably Maine Pyaar Kiya nostalgia at work) as well as 3 of their own kids and one illegitimate brat. Their daughter Pammi is engaged to Dr. Rohan. Rohan wants Pammi but Pammi falls for Dev hence Rohan reluctantly sacrifices uniting the lovebirds. But a certain Annu has her squint set upon Dev. So in order to get Dev she marries pansy brother of Pammi, Sam (confused? not making sense? never mind read further). Thus, grand entry of one of the popular vamps on telly.

And panicky exit of the tenant (under the pretext that something was burning in her kitchen) who couldn’t tolerate anymore the detailed descriptions of golden threadwork on greenish-off-mixed-peacock-blue colored lehenga choli, designer bindi and nau nau heere jhade hue baalis of Pammi.

~ Following few weeks ~

But curiosity kills the cat. And in this case, the cat too eagerly switched on Star Plus following few Mondays at 8.30pm.. well, let’s just say, to improve upon her Punjabi. But what she got was more than she asked for.

Besides the Sisters-in-law competing for Dev and to womb his to be born, there were beautiful sidetracks like mute brat (rem the illegitimate?) witnessing her paralytic dad (oh yeah, he had suffered a stroke and reduced to wheelchair by now) being pushed into swimming pool by vampy. And then some day Dev dies in Air crash and Pammi is widowed.

After an overdose of Pammi’s hallucinations on Dev pouring holi colors on her in some temple complex, turn-by-turn camera angles freezing on the bewildered (?) faces in case of calamity (whose occurrence rate is minimum one per week), slow motion utak-baitaks, dropping ‘n’ number of pooja ki thaalis with exploding music in the background, never ending ‘vrat rakha hein’ on suhag raats and ‘sarvanash kar doongi’ type of dialogues.. our cat got killed anyway.

~ 2 - 4 months later ~

Office conversations. Again on a Monday afternoon.

- Madam, could you talk to boss and get my overtime duty of today transferred to Ravi.

• But why Kishan-ji? Any particular reasons?

  
  




• Ab aapse kya chipana madam. I don’t want to miss Des mein nikla today.

  
  




• Oh, that Pammi Annu saga right?! Where has the story proceeded now?

  
  

And,

Pammi has a daughter who gets sabotaged by Annu (too complicated to explain here). In between, the paralytic guy is dead, shok, matham and shraadin the house, rounds of camera angles zooming into dukhi faces and the mute brat shouting “maaa” all of a sudden which melts Aruna’s stone heart to accept the najaayaz as her own. Meanwhile, Dev is alive and suffering amnesia. Dr. Rohan takes advantage of situations and conducts a plastic surgery on Dev to change his face to Mihir (confused again? meant to say artist change here. Mihir is the character of Kyon ki Saans..). Mihirwala Dev is now Raj and ends up in Pammi household (God knows how). Pammi develops softcorner for Raj who is busy suffering from badly edited bouts of previous memories (probably in X-Ray or Negative vision). Annu schemes with Rohan and arranges his wedding. After much rona-dhona and melodrama Pammi marries Rohan and lo, again “Please do not touch” board hung around her neck from suhaag raat onwards. Annu has a rival male vamp in Pammi’s brother-in-law, Akash. He at times blackmails or partners Annu.

- Stop! Please stop and now! Nahi toh har Monday aapki special overtime duty pakki samjho.

~ Late 2003 ~

Yahoo chat.

Friend 1: Did u see last episode of Des Mein? The male vamp is wearing a ladki wala shirt.. brocade and see thru yaar.

F1: Arre, doc is Pammi’s new husband who raped her, where the hell is your attention?

~ Early 2004 ~

Friend 2 bumps into Star Plus and stops by to calculate the change in co-efficient linear value of Annu’s crooked right eyebrow and one popped out eye.

Raj is a look alike of don Rohit (who sports weirdest of fake goatees at times) and hence chased by the cops. He ends up at Pammi’s place with bullets in all wrong places. Pammi secretly nurses him for 3 full episodes and slowly realizes that Raj is in fact Dev. She also learns about Rohan’s misdeeds through some inspector. And then suddenly, the male vamp meets with an accident and everyone rushes to the hospital. However, Akash returns home and in the hospital bed slowly turns around in slow motion.... Dev!!! Not the Mihirwala Dev but the OLD artist Dev (Nahi samjhe? Never mind, its not worth the efforts).

So with 2 Devs, 2 Akashs, 1 Raj, 1 Rohit.. and absolute zero sense or sensibility, this story is twisting and turning (but not winding up) its way to God knows where. But the best part is, you can simply watch 4 -5 episodes in all 2 years and still be up-to-date on all happenings as established above. So Enjoy.. if u can that is!