HUM PAANCH on ZEE TV

Ekta Kapoor is the doyenne of Indian television, a brand in herself – creator of the successful Balaji Telefilms that now produces various kinds of content from feature films to TV serials to webcontent. She is most famous (or notorious depending on your viewpoint) for producing ‘Saas-Bahu’ daily soap operas the most famous being ‘Kyunki Saas bhi kabhu Bahu thi’ about 2 decades earlier and in the process also creating many super star talents.  These were for primarily the satellite television but Ekta had been doing TV series for DD earlier a lot of them equally successful.

 

While I haven’t seen too many of Ekta Kapoor’s creations there’s one which made it to my favourite – a series that she had been producing well before her famous franchises – that was a comedy series ‘Hum Paanch’.

And that’s quite remarkable because, this was so far removed from what she’s famous for, that the paradox is striking.

“Hum Paanch” was a series in a satellite TV channel called ZEE TV and had some hiccups in its roll out.  The series focussed on the Mathur family – the father played by widower Ashok Saraf (from Marathi film industry) and his five daughters and his second wife Shoma Anand.  His first wife played by Priya Tendulkar would appear in most episodes talking to him and only him, from her portrait that adorned the living room.  The five daughters were various talents from the Mumbai theatre world, including Vidya Balan in the initial episodes.

At the beginning the serial hit its bottom & it had a lot of rough edges, and seemed to be having a lot of false starts. But once the final team was in place  the series caught momentum and became part of popular culture in a very different way from the other Balaji TV serials did.

To begin with Hum Paanch was as ‘gauche’ and un-refined – unlike the daily soap operas where stylists and designers framed each scene carefully and each artiste was presented as beautifully as possible.   As one watched Hum Paanch it was clear that costumes were not their main focus, nor the settings, most of them were done on the same single set.

Equally as you watched it you couldn’t help the feeling that the artistes were hamming away based on the material that must have been written only a few hours before shooting began, and the entire episode completed on one days’ shooting.

So why did the TV series become a hit? That’s where Ekta Kapoor’s genius comes in and the fabulous talents that the final team had.

Each character in the TV series had their crazy quirks. The daughters included a krantikaari activist, a mafia don ‘Bhaai’,  a total loony who was hunting for a husband and a bespectacled visually challenged girl who kept bumping into things and of course the youngest girl who loved going around the neighbourhood colony collecting gossip for her mother.  

Each talent brought their quirkiness alive, within the constraints available to them, and even if they were not convincing, they managed to win over their viewers and become part of popular culture.  It was hard not to resist adding ‘bhai’ while addressing girls named Kaajal after the character of the girl who plays a mafia goon.  (more hilarious by the fact that this was played by the skinniest kid among the girls – whose feminity was being masked by wearing full sleeved shirts and her hair tucked under a baseball cap, and as little make up as possible.  I reckon the most popular one was Raakhi Vijan who played the role of Sweety as her character had the maximum quirks packed into any comic character I have seen – the most famous being that she was the ditz who loved singing a song whenever the door bell rang.

Yes the serial was as filmy as it gots, and at its core that reflects the majority of the viewers too, and that possible was one of the reasons for its popularity.

There were other recurring characters who helped contribute.  There was a neighbourhood aunt who wanted to recapture her youth and had a famous line ‘Aunty mat kaho na!” (don’t call me aunty, please!!) which was hilarious.  Another were the mafia dons who kaajal bhai & her sisters would try and get to invest in their hare brained schemes.

The elders would also do their bit – Priya Tendulkar was fabulous in delivering as best as only she could within the constraints of being in a photo frame. As was Shoma Anand whose acting talents found a new platform thanks to hum paanch.   The ever reliable Ashok Sharaf who was one of the leading actors in Marathi films brought a different energy of the slapstick employed in the Marathi rang manch (theatre) into this TV series.

Perhaps the success of Hum Paanch can be best described in the fact that it earned the right to comment on everyday happenings and the events at the time, even if its style grated with the Hindi sensibilities.  And some of the comments used to be offensive but fogiveable as they were in the ‘tapori style’ which one got used to in Mumbai and wouldn’t mind as it was said lightly.  (Ashok Sharaf described a policeman as an ‘extra’ from a telugu film’ and the irony was too heavy in that one).  The actors would freely comment on hindi films, offer their review s of the films and the performances and songs in the films.  In one instance when a night club didn’t allow entry to a few female patrons because they were dressed in sarees, there was an entire episode where the girls marched into a nightclub to bash the bouncers and warn folks not to mess around with the national attire (the only episode I can remember where the mafia goon ‘Kajal bhai’ changed from her masculine full sleeved shirts and jeans to  wearing a saree’).

And that ability to comment on thhe national developments and cultural events possibly describes best the success of the TV series ‘Hum Paanch’  - it had so much won the hearts of its patrons that they conferred on it a right to pass judgement on what was happening in the nation and around them.

Thanks to Ekta Kapoor for that tv series. Its success can also be gauged by the difficult standard that this has not been repeated for a long time and she’s yet to come out with a better comic series.