The Indian TV industry is all abuzz with excitement waiting for the new Balika Vadhu 2028,remade as a 20 year celebration of India's biggest soap that happened a long time ago and went on with pretty much immortal characters for 3000 episodes. Set in rural Rajastan it showed gutsy women who took bullets as easily as men took bribes. The child bride syndrome was a nominal thing as stories were all about evil adults.
Now, after 20 years, a lot has changed. Under Modi, India has become a superpower not only in software apps, but solar power and much else. And everything is once again made in India. Mud Ganeshas are no longer imported.from China. People are no longer ashamed to buy for their children pencils and pens made in India. In other words, Made in India is as famous as Bollywood.
ISRO has invented new technologies to regenerate ground water. BARC has met India's power shortages with hybrid atomic solar power.
India's demographic dividend has given jobs to teenagers who pass out of Medicine and Engineering as early as at 14 years. It is due to some huge innovations pioneered by HRD Ministry. Every child learns Sanskrit, Yoga and cooking to be proficient by the time they are ten.
What will be the storyline of the Balika Vadhu 2028?The director has tears of nostalgia as he answers: it will go back to the most glorious traditions of the first one. The heroine is a child bride, married off at 8 to a doctor who is 15. The family khaandaan is all about organic agriculture, but goons are smuggling Monsanto/Bayer GI food at one tenth the price. Thanks to India's liberal intellectuals, everyone has full freedom to burn the Indian Flag, shout for Kashmir's freedom, and carry India-made guns for freedom of political expression. The police are masters of investigation, but there is a lot of criminals out there hacking bank accounts, robbing people of their gold through dubious schemes, and destroying peace.
The 15 year old doctor finds a more attractive girl of 12 online and ditches his bride. She is undaunted and sets up a women's group for the greenification of Rajasthan. Camel smugglers constantly trouble her but she has mastered martial arts and defends herself.
The script writer, like the one in 2008, is a nervous wreck. He has to produce a new kind of mayhem every week. Anandi is dead by the 2000th episode. Dadima has benefited from Baba Ramdev's rejuvenation therapy and at 120, she rides a 500 HP solar hybrid bullet motorcycle and singleghandedly defeats the camel smugglers and saves the greenification project of Rajasthan. She is nominated to be the first woman to travel and unveil a new township on Mars in the Mangalyaan reusable space vehicle. She is asked, as she dons her spacesuit, what's her message for the planet back home. She says, "Everything may change, but we remain the same back home."
