'Kyunki…' it got copied

The man, who catapulted Kyunki Saas Bhi... to the top slot, talks about what went wrong to the great Indian soap

s_banerjee@dnaindia.net
The man, who made kitchen politics rule prime-time television, admits that it’s piracy that has given a body blow to the phenomenon that he had created.

Kaushik Ghatak took over the reins of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi when the serial was barely in its 30th episode and was just a rookie on the TRP charts. He took just a few more episodes to make the soap the number one on the charts.

When Kaushik handed over the serial to another director, Kyunki… was already a phenomenon.

Now that the serial is all set to be yanked off air, Kaushik says that the content piracy ruined its prospects. “The first blow to Kyunki… came when every other channel started copying its content. There came a point when every serial on prime-time was about kitchen politics. Though the others could never come near our soap in terms of TRPs but it definitely didn’t help Kyunki… and added to the fatigue factor. Kyunki… started a trend and the trend started affected Kyunki… later on,” says the director.
Kaushik, of course, doesn’t rule out the fatigue factor that had sent in. Even the director has not watched an episode of Kyunki… in the last 2½ years.

“Kyunki… made my career. But after the 160th episode, I moved on to directing other soaps. But I am still proud that I steered the serial to be a phenomenon on Indian television,” says Kaushik, who then moved on directing other prime-time TRP grosser like Sanjeevani, Woh Rehne Wali Mehlon Ki, Saathiyan and Sanskriti, making him one of the most successful directors on the small screen.

It was then when Kaushik was contracted by Sooraj Barjatya for directing Ek Vivah Aisi Thi. “I identified with the project as I too come from a very small town (Katwa in West Bengal) and waited for seven years to get married with my wife (who comes from a nearby village called Lohabeda).

So I knew that the film I was about to work on was close to my life,” says Ghatak, whose debut directorial venture Ek Vivah… is inspired from a novel by famous Bengali  author Ashapurna Devi.

Tell him that the central plot of Ek Vivah… sounds unrealistic and regressive and the director quips, “Life is full of twists and turns. When I came to Mumbai it seemed like New York to me. A widow with kids who was travelling with me on the train from Kolkata offered me shelter. I was so short of cash that I used to walk for kilometers to save Rs 3 which in turn paid for my lunch of one vada pav. Today when I look back, I wonder how I survived those days. I actually ran away with my wife to get married as nobody had agreed to the match. It’s just the will that makes things happen and I am sure that I have that.”