We all know the story of the Princess and the Pea, in which an innocent pea tucked beneath the cushions causes a delicate princess a night of sleeplessness and bruises on the back.
But we live in unprecedented times when incumbents blatantly refuse to concede elections and instead take to ranting on Twitter.īut let us forget that for a moment and turn to a handy tale from the Vikram-Betal collection. The only thing alive and potentially scary is a snake.Įven the dialogue swings wildly between time and place – “shaadi”, “barbaadi” and “chakkar katna” are uttered in the same breath as “parantu,” “vivah” and “prayatna”.The Raghuvamsha has a memorable passage: King Dilipa hands over the throne to his young son and retires to the forest with the queen because, Kalidasa tells us, “This is the family tradition of the Ikshvaku kings.” Granted, in a democratic republic, officials no longer hand over charge to their own children (or so it is supposed to be), but usually to someone their own age, and more often than not, to someone equally attached to power.
Even the trees in the forest appear to be dead. Cars honk in the background when the king pauses for breath, men wear sherwanis and women Gujarati style-nylon saris. Watch it now and you will cringe at the cardboard sets with curtains and doors painted on paper, electric cables, concrete roads in cities during the reign of King Vikramaditya, manhole covers, plug points covered with black cloth and worse.
VIKRAM AUR BETAAL EPISODE 11 YOUTUBE SERIAL
You could say the same about Vikram aur Betaal, our weekly tryst with a toothless spirit and a poker-faced king that seemed grander and more attractive than it would today.īased on the Sanskrit collection Betaal Pachisi and produced by Ramanand Sagar, the serial was a massive rage among kids who fell in love with the character meant to scare them – an old man in a flowing white wig, yellow under-eye highlights, scarlet lips stretched in a smile over a wide, denture-less mouth, and a signature cackle that echoed in school corridors and neighbourhood lanes, replicated pitch for pitch. The most cruel thing about growing up is that everything seems smaller – the park where you played, the toy gun that shattered the mid-afternoon quiet, and even the ghosts that followed you in dark alleys. When a small Sikh community thrived in an Iranian border town.The big news: SIT calls farmers’ killing in Lakhimpur a planned conspiracy, and 9 other top stories.Top 10 Omicron updates: WHO says variant spreading at unprecedented rate, India’s tally climbs to 57.An AI was invited to Oxford Union to debate its own ethics.We’ll go with one suitcase’: HD Deve Gowda on becoming Prime Minister
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