It’s a mad, mad world. The script changes with the weather, the make-up gets louder. And the clock is the biggest master. We spent a day with small screen vamp Kamya Punjabi for a glimpse of how the soap factory works

8 am:
The Mumbai sky is pelting rain. I call television actress Kamya Punjabi expecting her to cancel our appointment. Kamya, star of the popular daily soap Banoo Main Teri Dulhann on Zee TV, was to be my guide to the television industry for a day. That plan seems headed for a washout. “No, no, don’t worry. I will be at the sets in a few minutes. I have to,” she says over phone. I scurry and the autorickshaw driver has no problem speeding. “Arre, Dulhann and Prithviraj Chauhan are the only two shows I watch on TV. Sindooraji is great,” he says.
Sindooraji aka Kamya is the show’s lead vamp. If films in India are hero-driven, soaps revolve around heroines, but it’s the vamp who gets the drama crackling. This has been the guiding mantra of telly fiction since the saas-bahu Balaji Telefilms boom a decade ago. Some have even beaten the master (Ekta Kapoor) at her game, like Shakuntalam Films, the makers of Dulhann. Last year, the serial became the first non-Balaji soap to break the seven-year-old TRP monopoly of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.

9am:
Swathed in moss, Jeevan Mills, where the permanent set of Dulhann is located, could easily be mistaken for a Ramsay horror location. Inside, it’s a busy dream factory on roll, like most of Mumbai’s mills that have gone the mall or studio way. Kamya is in the make-up room. The script in front and the hairdresser buzzing around her, the process of Sindoorisation is on. Even the biggest of the TV stars first spot their dialogues on the set; the director gets to see the script a day before the shoot. The 500-episode plus, two-year-old show has as unreasonable a storyline as any soap worth its Ks. Its lead pair was killed by Sindoora but are back in a reincarnated avatar after the serial jumped two decades. So, Kamya plays a 50-year-old mother to actors older than her. “But I am ok. It’s better than playing sobbing heroines,” she says, as the make-up boy creates an angry scar on her forehead. A mirror and a couch are the only adornments in this strictly functional ante-room. “Sindoora got the cut because of the heroine Vidya, and she has vowed not to let it heal till she finishes her off (‘Yeh daag tab tak nahi mitega jab tak main Vidya ko is duniya se na mita dungi…’),” says Kamya. Schvoom zap schvoom. Imagine how crazy the background score must have gone at those lines.

... contd.