Karisma is still sexy at seventy

The original ''sexy sexy girl'' might be in the limelightthanks to her wedding plans, but Karisma Kapoor''s new avatar as a 70-year-oldmatriarch in her telly debut is no less striking and no less scandalous.Film actors, lavish sets, foreign locales, song and dance in slowmotion – the mother of all television soaps,has all the masala of a Bollywood potboiler. Add to that atitle track by Anu Malik and styling by Manish Malhotra, two well-coveted namesin tinselville. But it''s just not Bollywood that the series hastaken a leaf out of. That is, if you dismiss the claims made by US-basedbestselling author Barbara Taylor Bradford, who lost a case of plagiarismagainst Sahara Entertainment, the serial''s producers. Like mostother popular soaps on other channels, this one has characters played by actorshalf the actual age, even less. Take the heroine Karisma Kapoor, for instance.The series opens with her as the 70-year-old patriarch Devyani Singh, whosesuccess story is the stuff bestsellers are made of. Two lines aroundthe mouth, grey strokes on the hair and eyebrows, a jamevar thrown around theshoulder, eye glasses and cracked lips are all that take to transform the29-year old Karisma into a grandmom. Poor make up is complemented bya schmaltzy act by her in a deep-throated voice that does nothing to hide thefact that her sons are played by much older actors in real life. Ascheming , disrespectful sons (oneof them illegitimate), backstabbing and bickering - the staple of a daily soapare woven into this story of Devyani, whose metamorphosis from a rural teenagerto a successful business tycoon forms the main plot. When Devyani,the grandmother is not tackling her wayward children, she gets nostalgic abouther love life. And you see a young Karisma cavorting with Bollywood flunkeySanjay Kapoor (not to be mistaken with real life boyfriend Sunjay Kapur), handin hand, dressed in head-to-toe black, running in slow motion to indifferentmusic. You wonder if their marathon will take them to some distantland and a twisted tale, but no, the director cuts back to a brooding oldDevyani, whose sons call her "Dev Ma". Sure, episode threeestablishes one son is illegitimate, but does he have more than one mother thathe needs to address her by the name? Unlikely that we will have the answer,since, logic and soaps were never known to go together. Andsuccessful soaps these days count more on, spelt with K. Going by thetelevision ratings of serials beginning with K,, despite all its limitations, might just turn out to bemiraculous for its channel.