You can't tell when, how or why!
Sarabhai vs Sarabhai is an Indian Dom Com that ran from 2004 to 2006. It was written by Aatish Kapadia and was directed by Deven Bhojani.The show revolves around a fictional upper-class family, the Sarabhais, that live in a luxurious pair of apartments in the city of Mumbai. The family consists of:
- Indravadhan 'Indu' Sarabhai (Played by Satish Shah), a rich businessman who likes to play pranks. He is mischievous and usually picks on his younger son, Roshesh.
- Maya Sarabhai (née Mazumdar) (Played by Ratna Pathak), Indu's wife, a socialite. She constantly mocks her daughter-in-law Monisha for being too "Middle Class."
- Sahil Sarabhai (Played by Sumeet Raghavan), Indu and Maya's eldest son, a plastic surgeon.
- Monisha Sarabhai (née Manisha Singh) (Played by Rupali Ganguly), The wife of Sahil. She is constantly picked upon by Maya for her strange habits. She can get very emotional and is quite naive. She is also an extremely terrible cook, and serves stale or burnt food to her husband.
- Rosesh Sarabhai (Played by Rajesh Kumar), the younger son of Indravadan and Maya. He suffers from a speech disorder, so his voice is shrill and high-pitched. He is a wannabe theater actor and poet. However, his roles are usually weird (such as the Wind or Milk) and his poetry is strange, nonsensical and onomatopoeic. He is also very attached to his mother, Maya. Indravadan picks on him for being a "Momma's Boy".
The series also has a host of supporting characters, like Indu and Maya's daughter and tarot reader Sonia, her gadget-freak husband Dushyant, the servants Radhabai and Vitthal, and hard-of-hearing Uncle Madhusudhan. It often pokes fun at common Indian soap opera tropes.
The series ran for 80 episodes spread across two seasons. The first season was aired on Star One, and as of 2015 it has also been made available on the streaming service Hotstar. Season 2, titled Sarabhai vs Sarabhai: Take 2, made its debut on Hotstar in 2017.
Sarabhai vs Sarabhai contains examples of:
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- Indu and Maya bicker like, well, Like an Old Married Couple, but they do love each other.
- Sahil is often exasperated at Monisha's antics, and she often berates him for him allegedly siding with his mother all the time (not to mention her constant suspicion that Sahil is cheating on her). But all said and done, they deeply love each other, and several moments highlight this.
- Bilingual Bonus: The Sarabhais are ethnically Gujarati, and therefore occasionally insert words and phrases in Gujarati into their dialogue, showing up most often with Indu and Maya.
- Character Catchphrase:
- Maya - "It's so middle class!"
- Also Dushyant's "I'll explain!" and Madhusudhan's "Hein?"
- Creator Cameo: In addition to series creative director Deven Bhojani's recurring role as Dushyant, writer Aatish Kapadia appears as Aniruddh "Raw Banana" Mehta in "Poetry Competition".
- Crossover: A two-parter episode had a crossover with Khichdi, called "Khichdi with Sarabhai" in which both casts celebrated International Family Week together. Hilariously, the link between the Parekhs and the Sarabhais is between Maya and Hansa, played by real-life sisters Ratna and Supriya Pathak.
- Crystal Ball : A mystic shows the Sarabhais their future in one in the finale episode.
- Deadpan Snarker: The entire cast has its moments, though Maya, Sahil, and Indu deliver the most.
- Dropped After the Pilot: The pilot is framed as Sahil telling the story of why he had run away from home to author and scrap vendor Nagesh Iyer; the ending implies that he would continue to document Sahil's domestic troubles into further novels after his book on the Sarabhais was his first hit. However, this framing device, along with Nagesh himself, were never seen again.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Rosesh's voice is much deeper in the earlier episodes, closer to his actor's natural voice.
- Exact Words: In one episode, Indu challenges Maya to a scrabble competition: while Maya prepares a literal contract listing the actions Indu will do if she wins, he simply states that, if he wins, she will listen to everything he says. After he wins the competition, he asks her to make something to his liking for breakfast the next morning, and Maya gleefully notes that she only promised to listen to whatever he said – the contract says nothing about obeying.
- Extreme Doormat: Sahil. It's the reason he leaves home in the pilot; he is unable to call out his mother or his wife for their constant bickering - admittedly, it doesn't help that Maya's taunts to Monisha in her presence are often subtle, and Monisha often resorts to outright emotional blackmail. It extends to other family members as well - the only way he can express his true feelings about Rosesh's poetry book is while completely plastered.
- Giftedly Bad: Rosesh, seemingly at nearly every artistic endeavour he seems to attempt. This is most commonly seen with his poetry, which involves strange metaphors, somewhat nonsensical premises, and Rhymes on a Dime; Sahil has an Oh, Crap! expression on his face whenever Rosesh proposes to read his poetry. His luck with most other arts isn't much better – his playing of the violin in one episode sounds like "dying cats". Notably, he's not a terrible actor (though the voice certainly doesn't help), but his tendency to play somewhat odd roles make him just come off as weird rather than profound.
- Honey Trap: In "Sunehri", Mallika Sherawat guest stars as a Head-Turning Beauty maid that works for both Sahil and Indravadan’s houses and cleans them — literally, by using her beauty and charm to con Rosesh and Indu.
- Hypocritical Humor: Maya's philanthropic acts - such as helping alcohol-abused children, by hosting a cocktail party.
- Laugh Track: In the earlier episodes.
- Literal-Minded: Dushyant repeats the same sentence if someone responds "What are you saying?"
- Momma's Boy: Rosesh is essentially the Trope Codifier for Indian television. He absolutely loves his "momma" (he even calls her that, as opposed to Sahil's and Sonia's "mom"), and will never hesitate to take her side no matter what.
- Lethal Chef: Monisha's cooking skills are so poor one episode has Maya losing her voice after eating her food.
- Mr. Fixit: Dushyant loves to repair things. He often drops by to check if all gadgets are working fine.
- New Season, New Name: Season 2 has the subtitle Take 2.
- Only Sane Man: Sahil, mostly.
- Out of Focus: Later episodes make it easy to forget how Uncle Madhusudan is related to the Sarabhais at all: he is Indu's sister Ila's husband. The two of them were introduced together in early episodes, with Ila demonstrating a talent for getting Madhu to listen to her, but later episodes have her barely show up, presumably for the sake of gags involving him constantly mishearing them.
- Overly Long Name: Typically used for comedy.
- In Episode 45, when Indu plans to perform a play for Peace Day at the Cuffe Parade Club, Rosesh writes a play for them, entitled "What If Shah Jahan Had Cancelled The Plan To Build The Taj Mahal and Instead Built an Ordinary South Indian Restaurant".
- Season Finale: A mystic shows the Sarabhais their future.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Used sometimes, especially to show the pretentious attitude of some of Mumbai's upper crust.
- Episode 11 opens with Rosesh rehearsing a monologue for one of his plays in front of a bemused Indu and Vitthal, where he is supposed to tell the judge that death cannot destroy the soul. It comes out as:
Why, my lord, why? Can death destroy the multicoloured existence hidden within me? Death is but a comma, an interval. Can death destroy that transparent empire in every atom of my body which we call the body of God? Give me an answer, my lord, give me an answer!- Indu mocks him for it seconds later.
Well, imagine if someone wants to go to the bathroom in this courtroom. What would the writer write for them? "My lord, I have had the audacity to push the water within the caverns of my refrigerator down my throat and into my twin kidneys! And now, this same water insists on being reborn into this world! Therefore, may I go to the restroom to complete its deep desire?" Like this? Wouldn't they just put up their pinky? - Status Quo Is God: No major changes occur throughout the run of the show; there are barely even references to earlier episodes. Both Indu and Maya and Sahil and Monisha will stay together in their identical dynamics, even with episodes where an outside character threatens to seduce one of them; Rosesh will also remain unlucky in love.
- Surprise Pregnancy: One episode reveals that Rosesh was this when he finds one of Maya's old letters, where she reveals that she is unsure about whether she should keep the child, feeling like two children is enough. This makes Rosesh extremely agitated, as it makes him feel like his beloved "momma" didn't want him and he was always The Unfavorite.
- The Prankster: Indravadan. His pranks usually target Rosesh.
- Product Placement: In Take 2, a Vivo phone is used by one character and Vodafone Red makes an appearance.
- Running Gag: Hoo boy.
- Maya, at the slightest provocation, breaking into a laundry list of complaints about how Monisha acts too "middle-class".
- Dushyant trying to explain technical (or other) concepts, typically using Rosesh as a guinea pig.
- Rosesh's poetry, typically involving Rhymes on a Dime, unusual onomatopoeia (once comparing the beating of his heart to the starting of a scooter engine) and Mixed Metaphor.
- Monisha constantly suspecting that Sahil is cheating on her, which is the reason why he is always extremely tired when he comes home.
- Show Within a Show: Monisha's favourite soap operas often come into discussion, tying into the show's mockery of contemporary Indian soap operas; these shows are never seen, but are often discussed by Monisha in noting how the events in "real life" are exactly like the show. The one brought up most often is "Uska Pati Sirf Mera Hai" (Her Husband is Mine Alone), along with others like "Kabhi Saas Kabhi Naagin" (Sometimes a Mother-in-law, Sometimes a Snake).
- Title Sequence: On YouTube
- Uptown Girl: Gender-Inverted, with the upper-class Sahil falling for the decidedly, well, middle-class Monisha (then named Manisha). The Whole Episode Flashback dedicated to their love story goes into further detail, with Sahil actually having been engaged when he met Manisha, only to realise that he had fallen for her and breaking it off. While Indu was wholeheartedly accepting (even encouraging Sahil to follow his heart in the first place), Maya was extremely resistant to the idea, only grudgingly accepting Manisha as her daughter-in-law after insisting that she change her name to "Monisha", apparently because it was too "middle-class".
- Versus Title: Sarabhai vs Sarabhai.
- Whole Episode Flashback: Two. One that showed how Indravadan and Maya met. The other was about the marriage of Sahil and Monisha.
