Telly Tadka’s Reel Vs Real Theme for this week is going to be an interesting research on love stories that we witness on our small screen and the love stories which we witness in our real lives. Most of the love stories on small screen are either a fairytale passionate tale of two people or a hard hitting saga with a social message while real life love stories are neither always a fairytale nor carry any social message but there is plenty of drama on both ends.

The recent trend of small screen love stories has been mostly inspired from mills and boons passionate tale between a rich angry young man with lots of arrogance & attitude and a fun loving girl from a small town who is the damsel in distress. Both meets in the most unexpected circumstances and their journey starts from hate to love where eventually the angry young man is transformed into a passionate lover boy and the girl’s biggest saviour. This successful trend has been seen in many recent hit soaps like Geet Hui Sabse Parayi, Pyaar ki ek kahaani, Kitani mohabbat hai and Iss pyaar ko kya naam doon where the jodis like Maan-Geet, Abhay-Piya, Arjun-Arohi and Arnav-Khushi have become really popular because of their on-screen chemistry and the intensity. Viewers love to see how opposites attract each other and fall in love eventually. But we wonder whether in real life, a girl will really accept a arrogant posssessive angry young man in her life over a sweet romantic boy. In daily soaps normally viewers wait to see how the girl transforms an arrogant guy into a soft spoken one and fall in love but in real life, today’s girls hardly have time to waste on a possessive arrogant guy. Girls in real life will rather opt for a soft spoken decent looking working guy who can pamper them a bit and is ready to sincerely take on the responsibilities in the future.

Most daily soap love stories show lots of hot looking men manhandling the girls and eventually love blossoms in their heart. Lifeok’s recent hit show Saubhagyavati bhava is a story of an obsessive husband who physically and mentally tortures his wife daily but viewers so far are enjoying the different style of chemistry shared between the characters Virat and Jhanvi where even though Virat is an obsessive man but still viewers love to see his raw obsession for his wife. Viewers are waiting for the day when Jhanvi will raise her voice against the guy and transform him into a nice man. But we wonder whether its so easy in real life for a girl to overcome such cases of domestic violence and whether in real life one will really opt for such a obsessive husband just because he is rich or good looking? What looks hot in reel world might actually look more painful in real world as theres a famous quote which says life is not always a bed of roses in real world like how it looks on small screen where in the end every love story has a happy ending while in real life majority might have tragic endings.

Most of the love stories on small screen are either between a rich-man and poor girl or between a rich girl and a poor guy while in real life not always the guy and girl have much of a class difference. Major issue in real life love stories in most cases has been the caste difference where both families not always agree for the relationsip while small screen except for few shows have rarely raised the caste issue. Most of the love stories on small screen have issues related to class difference but the caste problem is normally ignored. A past show on colors named Yeh pyaar na hoga kam was one of the rare shows which focused on the issue of caste difference which becomes the biggest hurdle between two people in love but the show failed to garner ratings for the channel and went off air within few months. This makes us wonder whether viewers today are ready to accept a realistic love story or simply wants to see a fairytale mills and boons love story with some high voltage drama and intensity?

Shows like Saathiya and Yeh rishta kya kehlata hai mostly focus on love stories post marriage between a boy and a girl when they eventually start discovering love in their marriage, which is seen in real life arranged marriages in most of the cases but the shows eventually end up turning into high voltage dramas filled with misunderstandings, plotting and lots of kitchen politics which is not always the case in all real life arranged marriages.

Many love stories in real world have seen some tragic cases of honour killings where the girl or the guy’s family ends up killing the couple in love in the name of family honour. However thankfully, small screen is yet to witness a love story which is based on such tragic case of honour killing.

Reel life love stories on Television are mostly based on one’s fantasy where viewers always want to see love stories which can be termed epic or magical in the end whereas Real life love stories are mostly based on two people’s personal likes and dislikes rather than someone else’s fantasy. Viewers always expect reel life love stories to have a happy ending despite all the drama, violence and misunderstandings whereas real life love stories mostly have tragic endings filled with either heartbreaks or break-ups due to lack of communication or domestic violence. Most of the epic love stories like Romeo-Juliet or Laila-Majnu have seen tragic endings to make them more realistic, but however our TV audience are yet not ready to accept tragic endings in their favourite on-screen couple’s life.

Author:G.Ganguly
Edited By: Gouri Athanikar
Telly Tadka