50 Glorious Years of Doordarshan - III

.

Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi

Golden days of Doordarshan

Yeh Jo hai Zindagi!  I can still remember the days this serial was telecast...every Friday at 8.30 pm.  We were living in a colony and the roads of the colony were deserted on these days. Hosur (Tamilnadu) where we lived, was an industrial area and people from all parts of our country were living in our colony...I had very good Maharashtrian, Bengali, Gujarathi friends over there.  These people felt as if they were in their own hometown while watching this Hindi serial.   Chennai Kendra had not yet reached there and so Tamilians also became addicts of this serial.  The theatres were empty on these days!  If we were out of our home and came back running, we could hear the title song of the serial, blaring from each and every house in the colony! And then the laughter sounds will start...every member of the family, young or old, were laughing heartily!  My neighbour was a doctor, but his clinic was empty, mostly, during this time and he too was happily watching this serial!  

This serial was the first of its kind - comedy serial - by Doordarshan, which was aired in 1984. Shafi Inamdar(Ranjit) and Swaroop Sampath, former Miss India, 1979(Renu and she was really beautiful!) played as a couple and Rakesh Bedi (Raja) was Renu's brother.  Most of the episodes were single episodes and some stories stretched to two episodes, I think.   Satish Shah (the famous comedian in the later years) became very famous in this serial, who played different roles (speaking different languages of different regions of our country) in every episode.   Vijay Kashyap and Shulbha Arya played as their Bengali neighbours.  Some of the dialogues became very famous like:

"Yeh kya ho raha hai"  Tikku Talsanya uses this line, dragging each and every word. 

"Aa ha ha, what a relief"  "30 Years Ka Experience hai"  Satish Shaw made these lines famous!

Wikipedia says,  "Its popularity can be gauged from the fact that video stores in London would await periodically for the copy of the serial’s tape. Even the box-office openings in cinemas were affected due to the airing of the show. After a couple of successful seasons, the show took a hiatus (due to the departure of Shafi [2], one of the primary characters, from the show) and returned for a second innings with some additional cast."

All viewers of this serial felt very sad when the news of Shafi Inamdar's demise came in the papers.    The serial was written by comedy writer Sharad Joshi and directed by S. S. Oberoi and Raman Kumar.  The title song sung by our Kishore Kumar...was our favourite song!

Now, let me show you one episode of the serial from our treasure trove 'you tube'!  If you like it, you can watch more over there.  Now we are exposed to hundreds of comedy serials and may not enjoy like we enjoyed in those days, but we watched it with the whole family, which is very important and which we don't seem to do, now.

Edited to add (6.11.09): I came across this anecdote about Swaroop Sampath!  She is actor Paresh Rawal's wife and has got two grown up sons now and acts in plays with her husband! She also teaches acting to disabled children. Swaroop has obtained a Ph.D. in Education[4] from University of Worcester in England. She is also a teacher’s trainer now traveling across India to conduct workshops for teachers who engage themselves in imparting this knowledge for the benefit of children.[5] She was selected by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to head an educational program for children. [6]

.