During a conversation in the past with Ekta’s father Jeetendra, the veteran matinee idol had proudly commented, “I never thought Ekta had it in her. As a child she was overweight and very possessive of me. I thought she wanted to be a film journalist. Then one day she came to me and said she wanted to make serials. I thought it was a passing whim. Quickly I realized how serious she was. Now look where she is!”
Ekta still remembers the day she showed the pilot of her proposed sitcom Hum Paanch to the mandarins of a leading channel. They offered her a meagre sum of money more out of pity than admiration. She walked out with her serial’s pilot and her dignity to never look back again.
Having virtually re-invented the entire Saas-Bahu genre on television with her super-enterprising friend Sameer Nair, Ekta went on to film production where she was not as successful as she was on television.
In a past conversation, Ekta had said, “I just want to continue doing my job. I don’t think of myself as a great achiever. Your downfall starts when you sit back to admire yourself. I don’t look anxiously over my shoulder. I just do my work, regardless of competition. Half the people who meet me do so with pre-conceived notions. I’ve to constantly break through people’s biases. That makes me feel terrible. I’m not a bad person. I’m just a professional doing my job to the best of my abilities.”
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Tusshar Kapoor celebrates son’s Laksshya’s birthday
Thirty years after her first television stint, Ekta stands at the crossroads. She needs to re-invent herself, find new bearings cut across the selfmade barriers. Maybe produce web serials free of the Saas-Bahu formula and the sleaziness that has crept into her content to attract the wrong kind of attention. Maybe a film based on her own life?
