Well-defined good and evil

If you sit down to watch a Hindi
television serial, one thing you will never have to rack your brains about is identifying the heroine and the villainess (yes, the serials are still about women). There will always be audio and visual clues separating the good from evil.

The audio aspect is the background score. India has moved into the 21st century, but our serials still get their cues from movies of yore where Indian instruments (the sitar, for instance) heralded the good girl; the guitar or a drum roll indicating the arrival of the lady with sinister plans.

The visual clue is even more defined, the prominent of which is the bindi. The good woman’s bindi is invariably round and red, a clear dot that will
never disappear. In contrast, the woman who is out to wreck the family wears it in shapes, sizes, and colours that are frankly mind-boggling.

First popularised by one of TV’s earliest stars, Sudha Chandran, today, bindis that flare across the forehead are the norm for the villainess. And the greater her villainy, the bigger the bindi!

It is clear that our TV offerings are not tailored for subtlety. Our heroes and villains are portrayed in black and white, their character distinct from the first episode. The irony of such black and white characterisation is that Hindu mythology, which dominates our popular culture, is full of greys: good Yudhisthira gambles away his wife; evil Duryodhana saves Karna from being humiliated by the Pandavas; even the most evil of them all, Raavan, is perhaps not so.

According to one version of the Ramayana, he was a gatekeeper at Vaikunta (Lord Vishnu’s home) and was cursed to be born on earth, a curse that could be broken if he was killed by Vishnu. So was he really evil or merely ensuring his return to Vaikunta?

In our daily life, we accept our leaders with their follies. We know our politicians make money from underhand deals, or that they promote their kith and kin while denying meritorious party workers a chance of rising through the ranks. But with a shrug of our shoulders, aware that good and bad are two sides of the same coin, we accept them as long as they serve society and  their greed and arrogance doesn’t go beyond tolerable limits.

Perhaps this is why when we watch a TV serial or a movie, we don’t want any more greys. Too much grey makes Common Woman a confused person.

She (or he) wants the villainess clearly distinct from the heroine, without ever having to guess. She wants the villain to be completely negative while the heroine is unbelievably pure and perfect; both types don’t actually exist in real life. And while the movies of  yesteryear separated good from bad through clothes (sari versus western attire), today’s demure heroines sport a red bindi, and the villainess, a black one.

The viewer is never left in any doubt as to who’s who.