Upon reaching India, the firangi bahu dons a saree and becomes the perfect Hindu daughter-in-law

Sahara One has a new program. In it, a young man from India goes abroad to study. There, he meets a foreigner. He falls in love with her and marries her and brings her home to India to meet his mother. A mother whom he adores and loves terribly. His brother is already married and living at home with his mother. His bhabhi is not to be trusted and is often treated dismissively by his mother and is always scheming against the family. Upon reaching India, the firangi bahu dons a saree and becomes the perfect Hindu daughter-in-law. She doesn’t work, keeps herself busy with looking after her mother-in-law while speaking in broken Hindi. Sound familiar?

No, this isn’t a biopic on Sonia Gandhi. This is a new, fictional saas-bahu serial called Firangi Bahu. And you have to stand up and say Sahara pranaam while watching it, because chit fund and dodgy health aside, Sahara Shri has managed to pull another coup. This is the first Hindi serial to have a foreigner as the lead character, played by an actual foreigner.

Usually, whenever there’s a non-desi character in any Hindi TV programme, the casting directors find some fair Indian who is then given a bad wig and made to spout lines in a bizarre accent. Sahara Shri has shown that he will go where no man or GEC has gone before. No, I don’t mean Amar Singh’s house, but into the shadowy world of foreign Bollywood hopefuls so that Sahara can cast a bona fide firangi to play the role of the blonde bahu. She’s even saying her own lines and not letting anyone else dub for her. This is revolutionary stuff, people.

What Sunny Leone couldn’t do in Jackpot or Kiron Kher in Baariwali, Dutch actress Sippora Zoutewelle has managed to do in Firangi Bahu. Jai ho.

But that’s where the revolution ends. I have suffered five episodes over two weeks for the sake of this article. It seems you can go as Dutch as you please, but a saas-bahu serial must remain a saas-bahu serial.

Firangi Bahu is centred around a joint family that lives in a house painted by the Asian Paints boy on an LSD trip. The father-in-law is a sweet man who runs a garment store. The saas is the matriarch who runs everyone in the family. There’s a sister who makes the cardinal mistake of falling in love. How do we know it’s not the good India to love someone whom your parents haven’t chosen for you? From the fact that the object of her affection is a married man. Pro tip from Firangi Bahu: only love someone whose horoscope has been approved of by the family pandit. Then there are three sons, one of whom is a lallu, one is the hero, and one is scheming and undependable. Of the two sisters-in-law, one is sweet while the other vicious. Completing this family is the Virgin Mary, also known as the firangi bahu.

She wears chiffon sarees with aplomb. She also prays devoutly at the family mandir which is, of course, bang in the centre of the drawing room. And because all the Hindi GEC audiences must have gone into shock that a meat-eating foreigner is being shown living in a shudh shakahari home, the canny scriptwriters wrote an entire episode where she declares that she’s always been a vegetarian. And then cued the theme song… “aaaa aaaa aaa, firangi bahu.”

Like all good wives, she’s also ready to spend a few days in a lockup and take the blame for being found in a gambling den, instead of allowing her brother-in-law to be arrested for this crime. See? She’s as Indian as aloo paratha. Never mind how in reality, Indian wives of business families steal costly paintings from their husbands’ homes and then blame the family for the pilfering.

Snark aside, I’m most impressed by a prime time Hindi saas-bahu programme showing that not only is it okay for your sons to marry foreigners, but that this is actually a better idea than marrying an Indian woman. Sure, there’s the regressive nonsense of showing that the firangi bahu’s entire day is spent dusting curtains (who does that?) or cooking or taking part in a purity ritual. But at least there’s someone, even if it is Sahara Shri, propagating the view that people should be allowed to choose their own partners and that it’s ok if they’re not of the same religion or from the same community as you.

Of course, it would have been even more impressive if she was Italian and not Dutch. My advice: make Firangi Bahu mandatory viewing at Subramaniam Swamy’s house and at the BJP headquarters. Also, maybe the Gandhis should look out for the possibility of intellectual property rights on their lives, given two television shows — 24 and now Firangi Bahu — have been inspired by them. Then again, imitation is the best form of flattery.

You can watch Firangi Bahu at 7.30pm from Monday to Friday.