(From left) Saat Phere stars Anchal Dwivedi, Rajshree Thakur and Sharad Kelkar in front of Victoria Memorial on Friday. Picture by Aranya Sen

She is the one dusky bahu on TV who gets the hunk of the show for a husband without help from Fair & Lovely. But she is also one to suffer from all the complexes of those who give business to the beauty cream. Saloni ki Safar is what Zee TV’s top-draw soap Saat Phere is subtitled as. And hers is indeed a rocky journey.

“Ekbar chanta mara tha tumko,” Saloni’s eyes light up at the recollection of having once slapped sister-in-law Kaveri. Suffering all the wickedness of the world in silence can be quite a bother, especially when one has to stay in character for 25 days of the month. But Saloni, appearing every weekday in our drawing rooms, does have those rare moments when she stands up to crafty Kaveri.

“It is not like I can’t speak for myself. I have to forgive her as she is my brother’s wife but I make it clear that she was wrong,” Saloni says in her defence on her way to Victoria Memorial, on a whirlwind Friday trip to the city that fetches her handsome TRPs.

Next to the demure nanad was the loud bhabhi, as different in bearing and baring as a half-sleeved cotton blouse is from a cleavage-showing spaghetti. But why does Kaveri have to be so wicked? “I don’t know. I was born like this,” Kaveri squeals in protest. “Yeh Ram, main Ravan,” she adds.

But Saloni doesn’t think she is flawless herself. “Yeh khud ko bahut dosh deti hai; I think it’s because of her complexion.”

This is one issue that has touched a chord in many families, both in the Hindi heartland and abroad. Letters and e-mails keep pouring in. If one pile has guys proclaiming that they want a wife like Saloni, the other contains sad tales of dusky daughters and their mothers.

“But Saloni is good-looking,” protests Nahar, her handsome husband. He must have had his fill of fairness with his first wife. So enamoured is he of his wife that he does not even think ill of her for having sent him to jail in an earlier twist in the tale. “She has every right to beat me up if I am in the wrong.” Time for the Indian male to choke?

Nahar had married keeping his first marriage under wraps from his wife. “Everybody has a past. It is part of the modern Indian culture. Many of my colleagues in the industry have had a broken marriage but are happy with their second choices,” shrugs the six-foot-one-inch model (of a husband, too).

So, it wasn’t Karan Johar who brought infidelity to Indian screens, eh? “Of course not,” the lady sitting next to Nahar comes to life. She turns out to be Zee TV’s programming head Ashwini Yardi. Having been with the channel “for ages” she is quick to remind one of Ravi Rai’s Sailaab, the first Indian serial to show the past of a married couple. That was a decade ago. Today, Saat Phere is dealing with artificial insemination. Run faster, Bollywood!

P.S: In real life, Saloni signs as Rajshree Thakur, Nahar as Sharad Kelkar and Kaveri as Anchal Dwivedi. The family that mobbed them at Victoria Memorial during the photo shoot didn’t seem to care about that.