A Love Letter to Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai

my favorite show of all time - no qualifiers needed

There have been MANY MANY articles about how awesome and funny Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai was...and they are all right. There have been several -a- ‘Which Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai character are you’ quizzes. I took this extra spicy quiz - titled "Which "Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai" Character Is Actually Your Soulmate?" - I got Rosesh ...which you know ...whatever. 

But, what I haven't watched/ heard/ read is a sincere and loving "essay" on the show. So here it is. 

I love love love this show.

It was first broadcast in 2004 and I am told that I watched the show with my family when it first aired. Everyone at the Mankodi home is a big fan! 

But there is no way I remember anything from 2004. 

I remember Detective Omkar Nath - a cool show about a cool private eye (I thought it was very cool that Parmeet Sethi was wearing a shoulder sling bag and riding a bicycle and was a detective). Detective Omkar Nath - D.O.N for short was on-air when I remember watching SvS. Another show I remember - another ad actually - was for the Irfan Khan hosted 'Mano Ya Na Mano'.

IRFAN KHAN! 

IRFAN KHAN hosted a supernatural themed show. WOW! 

So, looking up these shows on IMDb we can figure out that I remember the SvS rerun in 2006 - perhaps when the show was being parallelly re-run along with the last few episodes of its first original run AND in its immediate syndication. 

SIDEBAR 

I never saw Mano Ya Na Mano because I found the ads creepy.

To talk about why I think the show is great we have to talk about what other shows were around that time. 

TV was DOMINATED by stories about conflict between saas-bahus, the husband caught between the two most important women in his life - his wife and his mother. 

Sounds familiar?

Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai is a story - to a certain extent - about Sumeet Raghvan's character - Sahil Sarabhai's constant struggle to appease both Maya and Monisha Sarabhai (The first episode is about Sahil escaping to Goa to get away from the constant quarrelling between Maya and Monisha). 

Several jokes in EVERY episode are about Maya's dislike for Monisha and to a lesser extent the other way around. 

So, what I am saying is - IMO - the show is both a reaction to and a subversion of these TV tropes - and at the same time about making fun of TV audiences. 

The show makes fun of everyone - unfaithful men and overly suspicious wives, so called 'middle class' idiosyncrasies and 'high-society' hypocrisies. 

but wait wait. we are getting ahead of ourselves. 

Let us go about this in a structured fashion. 

Let us talk about :

1) The Creative Team

2) The Cast and Characters

3) Recurring Elements and gags

CHAPTER 1:

HATS OFF PRODUCTION : a production studio helmed by JD Majethia and Aatish Kapadia the producer and writer (story, screenplay) of the show respectively. 

You may know JD as Himanshu from the slapstick comedy franchise - Khichdi and Aatish as poet Anirudh urf Kaccha Kela (Kacha Kela only appeared in ONE of the 70 original episodes but the character has become a bit of a cult classic).

HATS OFF is currently running a reimagining of the 1988 DD show - Wagle Ki Duniya. Wagle Ki Duniya was based on RK Laxman’s work and was created by the legendary Kundan Shah and produced by Dadasaheb Phalke award receipent Durga Khote. The revamped show also stars Sumeet Raghvan - and another coincidence - 2021 is Laxman’s centenary birth year.

Deven Bhojani directed the show - but we know him as the annoying tech-nerd and Maya and Indravadan's only son-in-law - Dushyant. 

Star One - the recently launched channel - where the show first ran (the show was taken off air and not rerun after 2006 - until Hostar - a streaming service owned by the STAR group in 2015 - made it available ) was aimed at urban, upscale audiences and SvS fit like a glove. The channel was led by CEO Peter Mukrejea and a titan of broadcasting - COO Sameer Nair.

SIDEBAR

Sameer was at the helm of Star India in the 2000s when it dominated television - and brought ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ and Balaji Telefilms’s soap operas on the Star Network. In 2017, Sameer started Applause Entertainment - backed by the Aditya Birla Group - and gave us the ridiculously well received ‘Scam - 1992’ (a show based on the 1992 Indian Stock Market Scam).

CHAPTER 2: Characters

1) Indravadan Sarabhai : Patriarch of the family - lazy, unhealthy, jocular and always supportive of his daughter-in-law -Monisha. The apartment complex where the Sarabhai’s live is built on the land where Indu’s old family home was. From the additional text in the show’s CD/DVD box sets we know that Indu was on the board of directors of an MNC and took VRS (early retirement) to take care of their kids so that Maya could spend time on social work.

But, we also know canonically that Indu has several thousands of shares of a fictional company called Alliance Industries and that he studied in Edinburgh - so Indu is a bit of a nawabzada who now basically just chills. One of his primary sources of entertainment - it would seem - is tormenting his younger son - a rhymester and wannabe theater actor - Roshesh Sarabhai.

2) Maya Sarabhai - a snob, a socialite and oh-so fed up with Monisha’s middle-class-ness. Indu’s mother thought Maya to be too modern - and Maya thought Indu to be annoying - but despite that they fell in love and got married in a hilarious flashback episode.

Ratna Pathak Shah - the actor that plays Maya - in an interview to Chalchitra Talks - made an interesting point about how Maya is almost the complete opposite of the character Ratna played in the much loved - Anand Mahendroo run  DD sitcom Idhar Udhoor where she plays a ditzy -dumb blonde type character.

3) Sahil and his wife live in the flat right opposite the senior Sarabhais- and Sahil is a successful cosmetic surgeon. 

4) Monisha - actual name Manisha - is Sahil’s wife much to Maya’s chagrin - a stay-at-home soap opera enthusiast, discount chaser and someone who wears the badge of ‘middle-class’ with pride. Monisha’s bad cooking and unwillingness to take care of her domestic duties are the butt of many -a-jokes.

5) Roshesh is a wannabe actor and poet. He does BASICALLY nothing. Roshesh isn’t featured in the opening song of the show and that leads me to believe that the creators did not originally conceive Roshesh as being as important to the show as he turns out to be.

6) Soniya is Maya and Indu’s daughter and is a tarot-card reader/psychic or something. She is married to Dushyant but she makes fewer appearances than Dushyant and the actor also changes a couple of times - I think. Look., nobody cares about Soniya’s character and her tarot card reading or whatever nonsense is always for plot convenience.

7) Dushyant is incredibly funny and a fan favourite. The jokes are objectively BAD but work fantastically well because of fantastic acting. 

8) Other characters include Radha bai and Vitthal - the househelp at the Sarabhais; Madhusudan fufa - Indu’s deaf-brother-in-law that won’t accept that he is deaf, Indu’s sister Ila and Maya’s equally snobby friend Sarita.

CHAPTER 3:

A recurring theme is the commentary on upper-class, privileged South Mumbai people - represented by Maya and her friend Sarita. It is interesting that only female characters are shown to be obsessed with status and whatever. Indu isn’t and infact often makes fun of Maya and her high-society habits. Even random, one-off characters - that are shown to be snooty are all women. Roshesh’s love interest at a point - Maggi and her mother Ms Killawala are so insufferably hoity toity that even Maya is annoyed. 

Anyways, linked to this snootiness is the hypocrisy - as the opening theme song goes - “ye jo nazar aate hai ye voh to hai nahi. Dekho inhe gaur se to dikhenge ye aur koi. Zubaan se oh my my kitne pyare hai - dilon me you don’t voh angarey hai. Hypocrisy me jeete ye saare hai….”

Maya finds Monisha’s babas and manats unacceptable - but she consults tarot card readers and expensive mediums all the time. 

Maya is the only one that likes (or atleast pretend to like) Roshesh’s horrible poetry and plays in which he does small and silly parts (a passenger train coach, a buffalo or a dog) - Sahil and Indu actively hate it, Monisha is indifferent. Through Roshesh the show makes fun of the artsy types I presume are a regular part of the Mumbai high society. 

Indravadan is aware of Maya’s hypocrisies while also knowing when Monisha has crossed a line. Indu shows sensitivity to the class and power dynamics in an interaction with Radha Bai and Vithhal over their perceived failure in performing their duties,  while Maya is completely oblivious to this.

Sahil is the everyman and the audience’s way IN to the show. The audience almost always identifies with Sahil’s response to a situation.

But, Sumeet Raghvan’s main talent imo is - when the character demands it - being excellent at sounding as if he has just been woken up from deep sleep. 

What I am trying to say - is that the show is primarily concerned with jokes and comedy and not satire or commentary on tv tropes. But those elements ARE present in the show and they reinforce the comedy.

The show is not-perfect. The production quality is sub-par, we often see boom mics in-frame, the layout of the apartment does not make sense. Even the jokes don’t always land and I regularly skip episodes, while re-watching - especially the one’s with guest stars. 

But watch the show for Rosesh’s stupid poetry, the ridiculous titles of the soap-operas that Monisha watches but most importantly for Maya’s seemingly infinite list of Monisha’s shortcomings, because we will not see a show like this or a stellar cast and team like this come together on television again.