Most wanted: men with mental challenges for marriage. Preferably rich. Preferably the heir to a large fortune. Definitely with good, kind mothers, wicked, warring siblings and the possibility of a sudden and complete recovery with the help of a simple, poor girl, who is desperate to restore her or her family’s fortunes, through this (in)eligible union.

In your saner moments, you may not believe this is a match made in heaven but who’s talking about heaven? This is the very latest trend on TV soaps — just a week ago, innocent and beautiful, illiterate and impoverished Vidya married a young scion of a business family who is equally attractive to look at but whose beautiful mind is disturbed ( Dulhan, Zee). He has the nicest possible mother, the worst possible (step?) sisters, a caring cousin and the newly-wedded Vidya who sees Adonis in him. Well, Shah Rukh Khan, then. Yaani ki, the sun and the moon and the stars shine out of his slightly dazed eyes.

Imagine, as John Lennon’s advised you to, that Tulsi is the young girl we once knew her to be before she became the mother of all mother-in-laws — that sweet innocent girl who was working hard to provide her family with a living and in this quest finds herself the object of male sexual harassement which gives her a bad reputation that leads her mother to believe a fate worse than death (marriage to a 40 year old man with a young child) is preferable, imagine that suddenly she receives a proposal for marriage to the oldest son of one of the city’s richest business families all because his mother has spent one night in her chawl and taken a fancy to her conversation — not to mention her culinary skills when it comes to poha. Imagine further that her intended groom is somewhat challenged. And now take a Marion Jones leap of the imagination and imagine Parvati’s Om as Tulsi’s challenged husband. It’s asking too much but that is precisely how it is in Thodi Sa Zameen Thoda Sa Aasmaan (Star Plus).

... contd.