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So where do I start? Kahiin kissii Roz (KKR) ran for about 2 years on a daily basis until it's cancellation a couple of years ago. The story revolves around the Sikand family a rich prosperous family of business people ruled over by the family matriarch Ramola Sikand (Sudha Chandran). This kind of premise is quite common in Indian soaps (indeed in soaps in general) but the storylines became quite outlandish and the level of violence quite high for an everyday soap. Though well into middle age I think you'll agree that age is no barrier to appreciating a very deadly lady at the height of her powers. Let's start off with a typical night time activity for Ramola, out on the prowl, carrying a gun and willing to use it to further her plans.
The above scenes show Ramola in one of her more conciliatory moods - she
allowed an innocent bystander to live. Later on in the series all kinds of people were to
die at her hands - police officers, doctors, daughters in law (yes plural), all kinds of
relatives, criminals, lawyers, fellow conspirators etc. The main object of her venom was
her daughter in law Shaina (Mouli Ganguly) and Ramola's own son Kumal (Yash Tonk).
Watching Indian soaps is not an easy task but Ramola Sikand is the type of irredeemable
villainess which makes the effort worthwhile. More of Ramola on the prowl.
In addition to Ramola there are numerous other women who appeared as gun toting villainesses or cohorts of Ramola. Ramola's arch rival in the villainess stakes is Avanti Rajpal (Sushmita Mukherjee). In the early episodes of the series (which I missed) it seems that Ramola has killed off her rival, but hey, this is soapland (and Indian soapland at that) which means she is soon back on the scene planning her revenge against her bitter rival. And boy, she is just as deadly and just as ruthless as her rival.
The episodes
which drew this series to my attention involved the a plotline where Ramola has arranged
the kidnapping of Shaina'a baby (in effect her own grandchild). Shaina is lured to a dark
and lonely location where Shaina is expecting to recover her baby but where Ramola's hired
thugs have other ideas. Fortunately for Shaina her brother in law is on hand to lend a
hand. However it turns out that he is the one who is shot whilst Shaina fends off the
thugs single handed - only to be arrested for his attempted murder.
Well that has just about touched the surface of this series. There will be more at a future date. Before anybody gets too carried away with this series I should remind everybody that in many respects this is a soap unlikely to be appreciated by western audiences - in fact towards the end this series wasn't liked by Indian audiences either. The acting varies from bad to OKish, the storylines are as plausible as a Baron Munchausen story and the direction is bizarre to say the least.. But yes I loved it.
