Tag: Entertainment

TV Serials

“Aarya”

At this stage on my life, I have the luxury of having time on my hands. This led me to seeing a lot of television serials. It was from a show Sunday Brunch with Sushmita Sen by Kamiya Jani of Curly Tales fame that I first got to know of Sushmita Sen’s venturing into her digital debut. Naturally, we knew of her as Miss Universe 1994 and a Bollywood actress after that.

“Aarya” the serial she starred in as the female lead got her the award for Best Actress Female at the Filmfare OTT Awards. The serial got much acclaim running for 3 whole seasons. These had 25 episodes fwhich aired from 2020 to 2024. A nomination for the International Emmy Awards for Best Drama series followed.

I was prompted to watch Aarya on JioHotstar. Watching this in 2025, I certainly had a lot of catching up to do! I soon got pretty interested in the show and saw all 3 seasons over several months. Sometimes I saw many episodes together, at other times there was along gap and I had to figure out where I had left off in the rather complex story. The story was interesting. I heard it was adapted from a Dutch drama series.

In my view, Sushmita acted well overall in a role which suited her- suave and sophisticated . Yet the story line seemed uncharacteristic of her – transitioning from being a home maker and mother of three kids to being a drug smuggling don. After an excellent start in Season 1, I saw a sameness in her acting. I wish she had been shown to be more vulnerable- and therefore more human! Her pet theme that mothers would go to any extent to protect their children rang hollow after some time. Yes, they would by and large! However, how many mothers would they take up drug smuggling in a big way in association with international gangs? How many mothers would kill or get people killed left and right?

It is true that in life some people do get good breaks from time to time. In this series all the chips were in Aarya Sareen’s favour . Episode after episode saw her win against the hapless ACP Khan. One felt almost sorry for the bumbling Khan – the last straw being that even Aarya’s kids called him by name as if he was some domestic servant of theirs and not a senior officer of the Narcotics Control Bureau. To add insult to injury, the director dwelt at length about Khan’s personal life which ultimately didn’t add any value to the story one way or the other. In another surprise, I thought the director was silent on the real story between the ever faithful Daulat and Aarya.

The violence and gore quotient was quite high all through the series but that was only to be expected. The story was gripping in many parts and the photography and screen play was of a consistent high standard.

If you like action packed thrillers, you will enjoy watching Aarya. Naturally, I have not spoken much about the story. Be prepared for some amount of complexity with many characters in the fray.

In The News, My Take

Aiyyo Shraddha

Have you come across Nandini Rao, teacher in Bul Bul Vidya Mandir? Or, Reena Dalal, India’s biggest Makaan Matcher? You will recognize her as the same lady who speaks on National Doctor’s Day, On Goal Setting, On Adoption of Stray Dogs, and on HR practices with equal flair and aplomb. She is none other than Aiyyo Shraddha, who has 1.55 lakh subscribers for her YouTube channel, 20k followers on Twitter, 352,000 followers on Instagram, and 318,000 followers on Facebook!!

Shraddha, is for me, one of India’s best entertainers on view at present. In a world of stand up comedy, where it is considered fashionable in some circles, to have vulgar language, with a lot of f’s and b’s and other expletives thrown in for good measure, she stands apart for her clean- yet remarkable funny shows.

Her shows are what in the old days used to be described as “family” shows. This means -from the grinning 8 year old to the gurgling 80 year old- all can understand and appreciate her wit and humor. Her themes are based on current goings on and naturally topics like Covid, work from home, and all that is going on around us feature in one form or another.

Shraddha, I understand, is a girl from Mangaluru who grew up in Mumbai- hence the mastery over Marathi shown from time to time in her shows. She is equally adept at English, Kannada, Tulu, and Hindi. This is a useful part of her armory, where she can adapt to different roles. Talking of which she plays several roles in the same episode. In a popular series, she is a young lady herself, besides being both her mother and her father!

Like in most middle-class Indian families, her parents too encouraged to do well in academics. Predictably, like many of her background, she completed her engineering and worked for a few years in the IT industry. She then realized that her true calling was in entertainment. She was a RJ in a popular Kannada channel Fever 104FM for nine years. I think the creative resume she sent was one of the best I have ever seen.

Later she became a host/anchor in Colors Kannada and later head of non-fiction content there. She is now on her own, producing , directing, filming and acting out her content on different social media channels. She also played the role of the fiesty landlady of a Women’s PG in Bengaluru in the Amazon Prime hit film, “Pushpavalli”.

In case you haven’t seen her shows yet, do check them out. I am sure those expressive eyes and knock out punch lines will draw you back to her shows, as they do for me.