Soap operas are pretty big in India, and even the Tibetans (or at least the ones that speak Hindi) get pretty into them. And instead of just being on during the daytime, they are on all day long and into the night. In fact several channels are dedicated to nothing but soap operas.
It also happened to be a fairly common practice (or at least it was with the Tibetans we stayed with) to watch TV during dinner. So depending on who wore the pants, either the wife or the husband, you may end up watching soap operas or cricket. Or in the case of one Indian couple we knew, the husband would often pick cheesy scary movies, like Anaconda 3 or 7.
At our first host home our host mother watched two shows fairly religiously during dinner. I don’t remember the real name of the first one we watched, but they always just called it “Baskar” because that was the name of the main character. He was a scruffy rude guy, and he and his mother were always being jerks to his wife.
The other show we watched, I believe must be a favorite of all, because we kept watching that one with our second host mom when we moved. That one was called “Pavitra Rishta” which means something like sacred or holy or good relationship. This one was about a couple who actually loved each other and were really sweet together, but sometimes would do dumb things like run away from home and get hit by a car. And when they weren’t getting into their own problems their family members usually were.
It was fun to watch these shows and try to figure out what was going on. The whole point of this post was that this was supposed to be a way for me to practice my Hindi. I would listen real close for as long as I could and try to pick out words and phrases that I knew. Most of the time it was just too much fast talking for me to be able to keep up. But sometimes when the sentences were short enough and slow enough I was able to tell what they were saying. The sentence I was most proud of myself for understanding was when somebody said, “I’ve been thinking about Manoff.”
Other times we would watch and listen and think that we knew what was going on and then propose our hypothesis as to what we thought was going on. Usually we were wrong, or at least partly wrong, but luckily we had people there who could interpret for us and keep us on the right track.
It was a decent way to practice, and I think if I would had had more time and learned more it would have become a better way to practice, but for what it was worth, it was at least a fun way to practice.
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