Kyunki …Saas Bhi Kabhi Thi, Kyun Tulsiji, Kyun??

Watching the inaugural episode of Kyunki… Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, 2025, my initial thoughts were, this is a spoof on the parivaarik theatrics of the series, which took the nation by storm twenty-five years ago.

But no. These guys are serious. They mean ‘bijness’. The same overdone family ties, the hammy performances (barring Smriti Irani, who cranes her still swanlike neck to bring a semblance of sensibleness into a series hellbent on shooting itself in the foot), the same tacky sets, the same uni-dimensionality and a blissful unawareness of the ground reality.

The dialogues have gotten even cheesier. At one point, Tulsi Virani, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, says, ‘Baa always said, if the women of the house cook together and the aroma of the food spreads across the home, then that is a parivaar.”

Seriously? The women of the world have moved on. Not in Ektaa Kapoor’s la la land. The womenfolk in the Virani household are still cooking and bickering.

The entire cast behaves as if they are miming the original characters rather than actually playing their roles in keeping with the 25-year old time bounce. When we first meet Tulsi, she is in conversation with her namesake: a tulsi plant. The monologue conceptualises the obsolete anarchic family values that would make even Sooraj Barjatya cringe.

Nobody spends time reminiscing over their past anymore, specially a matriarch like Tulsi whose day is never done. The first episode was suffused with clippings from the old Kyunki…Saab Bhi Kahu Thi. This ploy induced the opposite of nostalgia. It just seemed like a whole lot of lazy filming and unimaginative writing.

The women of the Virani family are still busy gabbing, the men are lounging around pretending to look busy and the series’ architects think they have a winning formula on hand.

They have another think coming! The revival episode of Kyunki…Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi is completely bereft of any interest for present-day viewers. The presentation is shockingly undernourished and juvenile.

To find the characters trapped in a time warp is disagreeably vestigial. It is like waking up to a world that has moved on. Scrap it before you make more of a mockery out of something which used to be part of our lives, once upon a time.