When Wodehouse scripts Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi

An episode :

Shanti Niketan:

It was one of those very many jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all. The Virani family is celebrating Baa’s birthday. Baa was either about a hundred and fifty who was rather young for her years or about a hundred and ten who had been aged by trouble.

Tulsi, looking dignifiedly like the statue of liberty, enters the resplendent hall. She is constructed on the lines of a Greek Goddess, particularly remarkable for aristocratic hauteur and forcefulness of the eye.

Abir whizzes in. He looked like an ostrich that had just swallowed a door knob. Abir, who lost his mother at a very young age, had lost all restraint, springing from girl to girl with an assiduity which seemed to suggest that he intended to go on dating them till the supply gave out.

He says “Tulsi Maathe, you ought not to have been here, for, what you are going to witness will tell on your health. You are very old!”
The fishy glitter in his eye became intensified. He laughs, evilly.

Tulsi shudders slightly and in addition to shuddering utters a sharp quack of anguish such as might have proceeded from some duck which, sauntering in a reverie beside a duck-pond, had inadvertently stubbed its toe on a broken soda-water bottle.

She just laughs a silvery laugh and disappears into the crowd leaving Abir anxious.

Karan arrives from Bangalore. Tanya, his devoted wife, whose motherly love is challenged by her husband’s step daughter Bhoomi, decides to speak with Karan about Bhoomi’s marriage with Abir.

Just when Tanya is about to talk to Karan, Tulsi introduces Karan to Mr. Mehta, their business associate and suggests that her grand daughter should marry into their family.

The obedient step son that Karan is, he agrees and makes an announcement in the party.

Abir is nonplused. When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand what anarchists feel when the bomb goes off too soon. His whole aspect was that of a man who has been unexpectedly struck by lightning.

Bhoomi trots into her room furiously, her voice trailed away in a sigh that was like the wind blowing through the cracks in a broken heart.

Abir leaves Shanti Niketan in utter disbelief. He experiences the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy’s Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.

Here, back in Shanti Niketan, Bhoomi sets herself ablaze. She is rescue though. With her face drawn, the eyes haggard, the general appearance that of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas pipe with a lighted candle, she tells her step father that she does not want to marry this bloke. She pauses and swallows convulsively, like a Pekingese taking a pill. Then she announces that she is pregnant with Abir’s child. The drowsy stillness of the party was shattered by what sounded to Tulsi’s strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. The Mehtas leave.

Tanya calls Abir to inform him about this development. Abir laughs again, evilly. A laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge..

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Naah, I wasn't going to make Kyunki a musical comedy.