From 'Banegi Apni Baat' with Irrfan Khan to 'Tara', Zee was once the voice of a changing Indian society

Post-liberalization India: In the 1990s, channels like Zee and Star TV painted an imperfect portrait of a country on the cusp of change. (Photo by Huỳnh Dạt via Pexels)

In recent years, Zee Entertainment has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. But that doesn’t take away from the pioneering work done by the entertainment giant as the platform for some revolutionary tele-serials which give us an inside look at the India of the 1990s.

From fire-spitting Tara, explorative and diagnostic Banegi Apni Baat, a scandalous Hasratein, a Binaca Geet Mala-ish Philips Top 10 or the crazily popular Zee Horror Show, a new world shimmered into existence every evening in the upheaval and transformation of the post-reforms India. The serials, with loud, even camp and unmistakably larger-than-life characters, shored up with even more melodramatic music, mirrored the aspirations of a young India eager for a life with more defiant attitudes. Zee wove itself, very daringly and deliberately, into this tapestry of the heaving social fabric that, if one looks back, paved the way for the OTT serials of today. Here is where we find the genesis of the snake-dancing, poison-spewing vamps and the electrifying resounding echoing slaps.

Sartorial extravagance was the hallmark of these serials where splashes of red and yellow and pink slashed the scene, culminating perhaps in the fetish of Sudha Chandran’s elaborate forehead-covering bindis and quivering toxic looks that lasted a full five minutes. The music too was ratcheted up a notch, giving the on-screen drama an even more illicit air after the uprightness and dignity of the serials like Hum Log, Khandaan and Buniyaad which, with their rather civic grace, were the pride of the state broadcaster Doordarshan. In effect, Zee split open the urbane landscape to allow small town, lower middle-class India without the self-conscious and romanticising zeal of Doordarshan serials, the vibrancy chronicling the aspirations of a country in a hurry.

Many of these serials captured the anxieties and hopes of women raring to find their place under the sun in new professions and also navigated the burgeoning shiny consumerism that was being handed out. They featured women like Tara or Savi in Hasratein who dared to question social mores and refused to fit into earlier roles.

In one sense, these characters transcended the space of the serials with their sassy optimism. They shone a light on the undercurrents of the dark side of a changing social life that was seeded by Hum Log where one saw domestic dominance and abuse across time. The small screen over-amplified the dramatic lens, as many critics would have us know, but much social taboo and unease was flung into the open. Everyone nattered about such topics in drawing rooms, thus making these spicy dramas a vehicle for social discourse. For the first time, across classes and across cities, people started acknowledging the patriarchy, the disjunct between modern and traditional Indian values.

Looking at the serials individually, each reflected a society tugging at the same clamouring for openness and freedom from conventional and censored serials that were aired with an eye to didacticism and setting up an exemplar of righteousness and goodness. Hasratein portrayed female adultery with Savi, a professor's wife, who fell in love with her boss. In Tara, Zee’s first ever serial, actress Navneet Nishan portrayed the strong and decisive female lead and had a gay character, a rarity on the small screen.

The slick Banegi Apni Baat had stylish actors like Irrfan Khan before he emerged as the towering artist of the 21st century, as well as a cavalcade of stars who drew attention to complex emotional issues about female education and financial independence. Campus also followed the rite of passage of romping through college and entering adulthood while confronting tricky questions in real life. Hum Panch was a popular, dinky, comedic serial which used the device of a first wife speaking from a photo frame as the husband tried to bring up his five daughters.

Zee, thus, became a kaleidoscope of the 1990s inspiring other platforms like Star TV to follow suit. Igniting social discourse in a relatable and funny manner, making them a shared cultural event, these channels painted an imperfect portrait of a country on the cusp of change. At least for the first decade of private channels in the country, India found its voice through the television sagas.

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