TV Serial Characters

Hey guys. Ive been watching these TV serials pretty regularly, and found a Hindustan Times article that indicated that the characters depicted on Hindi TV Serials are innaccurate and are not representative. What do you guys think? Are women in India like the women that we see in popular TV serials?

TVQ

 the simple answer to your question is yes and no. almost all the female characters shown on tv start as true to life characters, however multiple extensions force the producers/director to exxagerate thier personalities thus rendering them unreal. another problem is that the characters are often bounded in good and bad categories, however most people in real life walk on the gray areas.

                  let us take a few examples

jassi.....she was one of the most real character on tv, someone who gets pushed around and used bcoz she does not display sophistication and groomed look. her simplicity is very attractive but at the same time bane of her life. she is a simple girl unappreciated for her capabilities and who dreams of making it big in the industry. even her yearning and admiration for her casanova boss had a ring of truth to it. things started going downhill when purab fell in love with her, she displayed a twisted form of selfconfidence(more on the lines of snobbery, egoistic pride, i am the best attitude), she also came across as a confused prude with double standards. things got further bad when she went for a complete physical and mental makeover and armaan, her boss began to reciprocate her feelings in a overboard manner. she went from the most realistic to most unrealistic character in a span of 6 months. 

pooja.....the character again had a ring of truth to it, a simple. lower middle class girl who wanted to make big in a male dominated industry oozing glamour.her tough life at college was very close to truth as was reema and ronit disillusionment with life.everyone in the college was struggling to find a meaning to thier life and make thier dreams come true(some more than others), while thier parents were struggling to keep up with them and guide them(blame it on the generation gap). suddenly she was pushed into this oddest marraige .her dreams and struggle to become a film director vanished , she is busy playing family politics these days with illegitimate kids, property issues, exbf as brother-in -law...as so on. completely unreal. almost same has been the case of kkusum and her progeny

tulsi ......personally i believe that she is the most true to life character amongst all shows. she has somehow escaped the fate of plastic surgery,multiple marraiges and so on. for those of you who have seen the dynamics of joint families with immense money will recognise her as the real life martiach.her struggle to keep the family together, her way of playing family politics, her changing relationships and the power struggle all have a ring of truth. she is kind , nice and openminded, at the same time she is overconfident, has a sharp tongue, does not mince words and is egoistic.she loves her husband to death but she does not forgive his transgressions easily. she has fought ,respected and hated her mother-in-law in the course of her life(which is true for most of the married woman). she accepted karan (illegitimate son of her husband) but she does not hesitate reminding him of that when the occasion requires.she makes very strong decisions at a price to herself but her decisions are not always right(gautam's marraige to ganga, ansh's marraige to nandini........). she however tries to make amends when she realises her mistake. she also pouts when her authority is being overstepped and lately she is having a hard time accepting her kids overthrowing her authority completely(story of almost every mother).however there have been some very unreal incidents in her life.

Some Producers like Ekta say that the characters are based on real life characters. I don't really think so. The reel life characters are the product of fiction and not fact.

characters in serials   to some extent are real  but  mostly are larger than life like parvati in kggk who tackles every situation and emmerges as winner.  then there are some chracters which i would say are exaggerretad like kkussum .  if u look back she was a simple  girl  next door  but if u start counting how many times she was kidnapped or married in the drama. o my god. i have lost count

but  dir& prod have to show them like this because this what viewers want to see . we hate sumitra for not accepting disha even if we know that she doesnot know the truth.  so characters are what we want them to be.  we cry when they are crying. as parvati said in KOFFEE WITH KARAN that ekta told them to cry  because when parvati  and tulsi cry TRP's go higher.  i think  that sums up what i want to say.