Mona Lisa Puja! Bengali TV Shows Continue To Go From Bad To Bizarre

Imagine this- a woman looking at a copy of the famous Mona Lisa painting on a wall and her next thought is to get an incense stick and a white flower garland to pray to the unknown goddesses. Sounds, bizarre? Impossible? This is exactly what happened on a Bengali television show titled Gouri Elo, a scene which is cracking up the Internet right now.

In the viral clip from one of the episodes of the show Gouri, the protagonist, who is a woman from a rural part of Bengal, visits a Doctor's house, her love interest in the show. There she sees the painting and decides that it must be some goddesses who has not been appropriately decorated. So, she decides to take the matter into her hands and offers a puja to this "deity".

The clip has people on social media questioning the lazy writing and the stereotyping of people from rural parts as ignorant. Just to say, if one thinks that Hindi television shows are capable of punar janam (rebirth) and a woman washing the laptop of her husband then nonchalantly hanging it to dry at the clothesline, then understand that Bengali shows are no less.

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Gouri Elo Mona Lisa Scene

Garland on Mona Lisa's painting is just the tip of the bizarreness that desi serials have to offer. The absurdness peddled goes long and deep, most of the time it's either to create a dramatic point and other times it just seems that the team placed little to no effort in the props used for a scene. If a writer or a maker gives deep thought to a character or a scene, the show would definitely benefit a lot.

It's been some time since most people have watched any of these shows for content, it has not become a source of memes and senseless comedy online. Moreover, it needs no critic to sit and point out the overdrawn nature of the scenes or overacting prescribed to a character, it is right on one's face.

Here is a list of such scenes from Bengali television shows which will leave you questioning your own sanity and idea of physics, death, emotions and filmmaking:

Gouri Elo: The show is about a young girl named Gouri who comes from a rural background and is married into a rich, affluent family. She is taking time to adapt to their modern ways of living while being fascinated by the interiors of the house. In her husband's room, she comes across various paintings and one of them is Leonardo Da Vinci's, Mona Lisa. Naturally, she is intrigued by it. But she thinks that the picture is of Goddesses and she decides to worship it.

Krishnakoli: In this show, there is a scene where a doctor, who is in a PPE suit is trying to revive a patient using two floor scrubbers. While doing so, he says with a straight face, "I cannot say anything about him, we're trying our level best." The netizens pointed out the scrubbers, which are used to clean the kitchen, and were baffled by the sheer laziness of getting a proper prop which suited the scenes better.

Jomuna Dhaki: The Bengali-language show was touted to be quite progressive as it focused on a woman who starts playing Dhak, amidst men. Women were traditionally not allowed to play dhak. It was pathbreaking until they incorporated the same old mistake- lack of research and not even taking the effort to cover up the mistake. In one of the scenes, the lead character plays the bass drum while standing. The video got more than 1.3 million views.

Ke Apon Ke Por: The show ran for three and a half years. It was primarily a Bengali language serial, which later inspired serials in other languages like Hindi as well. The protagonist of the show is Joba, who is a lawyer and eventually becomes a judge by handling household chores and dispute cases at the same time. In one of the scenes, she is fighting a case in court while she is breathing with the help of an oxygen cylinder. Apparently, in another scene, she also defuses a bomb barehanded.