A newbie's guide to soaps

Over many lunches (during the hols) and dinners (everyday :( ) I've been forced to watch soaps (kannada all of them, and thankfully no KSBKBT). Actually one could look away but then the sound bytes get to you and so does the hilarity of it all.

Here are some things I learnt the hard way.

1. Title.
The title is invariably a female's name or something that relates to suhaag,kumkum, family and such. In the first case the lead female does all the crying but in the second anybody and everybody can cry.
In the second case the title and the soap have no correlation.(Actually yeah the title may get used in one or two dialogues in a span of three years or so.) Or you could say the title could be used for any of the zillion soaps around.
2. How to identify the vamp
Sleeveless blouse + more make up than other heavily "made-up" characters + garish background music (+ last minute evil look when the episode is about to end) == your friendly vamp next door.
3.Nobody dies in a soap
Yeah nobody does! Everyone takes one fortnight to die (see pt 4) and some 40 episodes later you realise the character is not dead after all. He/she is lying is in a coma/in a mental asylum/ in some random stranger's place having suffered memory loss.
The real reason a character dies (or rather correctly goes into a dead-for-forty-episodes state) is that he/she found a better soap (ahem a better paying soap I should say) to act in or he/she needs to be comitted (sometimes they go mad too!) or they have a fallout wid the big shot (heard of Kekta?).
4.Soaps warp the time-space continuum
Soaps can make time slow down to a crawl. It takes one hour (two episodes) to answer a door bell, an accident to take place, for the doctor to announce whether its a boy or a girl or whether someone's dead or alive.
Soaps can have the opposite effect as well. In a blink of an eye uncles become grandpas , aunties become grandmas (theu don't look a day older mind you; the only difference is that one streak of white hair and less than usual make up).
5.Everybody is born rich.
The clothes they wear for daily use, abe kisi shaadi mai bhi aise kapde kam dekhne ko milte hai!
6. Reinforcement of emotion.
When the director needs to emphasise on a particular emotion all he does is to show the same character's face from different angels.
UP DHANG.DOWN DHANG.LEFT DHANG .RIGHT DHANG.DIAGONALLY DHANG. DHANG.DHANG.DHANG.
you get the point don't you?
7.It all boils down to Saas-Bahu ki kahani
The current dinner soap started off as a love triangle. Two friends love the same guy.
Eventually (After a hundred episodes full of love-triangle drama) one of them meets with an accident and dies and the other female elopes with the guy and marries him.
The not-dead friend then goes to her sasural and guess who she meets there?
Her dead dost! The dead dost is alive (Aila!) and has married the guy's father (double aila!!) !!
8. Baa is actually Yoda reincarnated!

Her age is 200 I've heard!

9..

Oh crap forget it! A post about soaps! This blog is going to the dogs!