Khallas Agreement. Review on Serials produced by Ekta Kapoor

I was withdrawing money in the HDFC ATM at the STAR FLUSH office complex when a thick pile of paper fell on me. Shocked at first, I composed myself to collate the papers and was surprised at what I saw. It happened to be the AGREEMENT PAPER between Ekta Kapoor and STAR FLUSH, where the terms and conditions for making those Soap operas are clearly illustrated. Guess this explains why Ekta’s serials are like that. Like What? Like …….Read below and u will understand.

THE AGREEMENT

This Agreement is executed on this 1st day of April, 2000(Effective Date) between:

EKTA KAPOOR, daughter of Ravi Kapoor alias(Jeetendra), who is a director/producer of TV serials specializing in formulating insipid, gibberish, monotonous, repulsive and tasteless Family Soaps and has been making inroads with such serials into major TV channels in India

And

STAR FLUSH, a channel which is facing stiff resistance from the Indian audience and in a desperate-move-to-shake-the-competition is keen on introducing never-ending, tireless super mega serials which can continue to gain TRP ratings from the current as well as the following generations of the viewers however detrimental it may to be the sanity of human beings.

WHEREAS EKTA KAPOOR and STAR FLUSH have agreed to set out in writing terms and conditions upon which EKTA KAPOOR shall Make, Direct and Produce such less-on-santiy, more-on-media hype, less-on-content, more-on-star cast, less-on-subject, more-on-dresses kind of serials.

The parties intending to be legally bound hereby agree as follows:

1. All serials should have a joint family which has more family members than the total residents of an average resident colony and such family members shall be guided by the following attributes:

a. Such a family will invest heavily in costumes and will take every opportunity to flash them during any part of the day. Days also includes the nights.

(Pls blame the lawyer if you found this sentence intriguing)

b. There has to one super ageing couple with one of them bound to die within a span of 50 episodes. The surviving member then shall resort to Flashback of glory days in front of a huge non M F Hussain portrait galore with artificial garlands.

c. Whereas such serials shall be congested with many brothers and sisters of different sizes and shapes, who shall co-exist and such a family being true, the following shall also be deemed to be true:

i.  One of the siblings shall revolt against the family either directly or  indirectly(through his wife).

ii. Atleast one half of the family members shall suffer a non-compatible and/or dis-harmonious marriage and not less than one-third of such dis-harmoniously married spouses shall resort to adultery as solution. And that, atleast half of such non-compatible and/or dis-harmonious marriages shall be a result of previous affairs in this birth or otherwise.

iii. In addition to the “in-house” exhibited unhappy marriages, atleast one

of the sister’s marriage shall not bound to have the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ advantage. Such sisters shall boomerang to their parental house, become sympathy characters and yet, at the same time, also provide sympathy to other house members as and when required for transactions which in normal conditions of temperature and pressure wouldn’t even deserve a second look.

iv. Owing to such rampant adultery, the entire nation would have corners infested with ‘the other man’ or ‘the other woman’ and/or ‘the illegal child’. The director shall make use of hill-stations and other such exotic locations to ‘originate’ such ‘the other’ characters and also provide jobs to struggling actors and actresses to do ‘the other’ character roles.

v. That each brother and their respective spouses shall over a period of

time, develop hatred for some or all of the remaining brothers and their spouses especially of the future generations. The director shall make exemplary use of ‘Loss of memory’ to justify such situations and drag the story to meaningless lengths till a new ploy would be hatched or the dates of the character in demand is available for shoot.

vi. Most happiness or most unfortunate incidents shall revolve around either the eldest brother or the youngest brother or a combination of both. The circumstances developed owing to such incidents shall have a remarkable impact on the mental frame of the family as well as the sanity of the viewers. And such situations shall become the basis on which the serials shall be extended on and on and on and on for ever till either STAR is FLUSHED or EKTA goes KAPOOT. Mercy shall definitely not be shown towards the banging-their-heads-on-the-wall audience.

1. Such serials shall be titled starting with only'K' and if the said letter is already the first alphabet of the Title, then two(2) Ks shall be prefixed to honor this clause.

   
   




2. The director shall have the complete calender as well as knowledge of ALL the Indian festivals. Episodes being telecasted on or close to such dates shall only focus on those festivals by way of songs, prayers, colors, lights, heavy dresses et al and not the story.

   
   




3. In case a situation arises where an actor decides to forfeit his role in the serial, then such actors shall be replaced with equally boring and struggling actors. such replacements shall happen by giving logical breaks to the serial to the best possible extent like hospitalization, accident, loss of memory, lost in transit and many other such easy-to-conceive-and-fool kind of situations.

   
   

The pages after this were unfortunately mutilated and hence I cant replicate them except the last page which was as below:

IN WITNESS THEREOF, both the Parties have signed this Agreement through their representatives on the day and place first mentioned above.

Name: EKTA KAPOOR                                STAR FLUSH

I think this conclusively explains the root-cause of our sufferings. Ekta……… Will you please tell me if this Agreement has a TERMINATIONclause?