Was it ‘coz Ekta Kapoor didn’t want to hear Natasha Kapoor wail any more, or was it ‘coz killing off the character would have left the actor out of work?

The makers of Bade Acche Lagte Hain are misleading the audience and us; and we don’t like it one bit. Initially reports – not the doctor’s – suggested that Karthik Sharma would die after the accidental gunshot and Priya and Ram would split because of it. Chirag Thakker, who is playing Karthik, even confirmed the story to a daily; but now we hear rumours that the character will not be bumped off. Instead, he will be kept in critical care at the hospital.

In the last episode, we saw a blood spattered Karthik lying on the hospital floor while his wife wailed and wept over his ‘dead’ body. But as soon as Priya came on the scene, she noticed that her brother was still alive – of course, no one checked his pulse, right? While everyone thought that the poor pregnant lady was in shock and couldn’t see properly, we noticed Karthik moving and trying to breathe. We yelled in front of our TV sets for the oxygen mask and some attention from the doctors and they finally heard us. So now the dude is in the operation theatre and under observation though in critical condition, and may not survive, the cheerful medico announced – how novel!

So much melodrama over nothing. Wethinks the whole fiasco was a major gimmick by the producers to up the TRP of the show and boy, did it work! There can’t be any other reason really – you will agree, we are sure. It couldn’t be that Chirag was threatening to quit ‘coz he wanted more money. No one bullies Balaji Telefilms – that is Ekta Kapoor – especially if you are a newbie, no! The writers may have wanted to show a lot more rona dhona by killing the character, but seeing the new actor out of a job he recently bagged may have pinched the daily soap queen to show some mercy.

Ah… all said and done, Karthik is not dead. Which means that Natasha will not have to commit fashion faux pas – like that black and white tent she wore when she yowled over the ‘body’ – by wearing dreadful white saris, and Ram and Priya are not going break up just yet…or are they? But that’s another story best left for another day!

Our man Karthik was shot by the cops and died in the hospital while saving his sister Priya. But wait….why is Natasha Kapoor wailing?

It all came to head last night on the Hindi soap Bade Acche Lagte Hain. Ram Kapoor, his little sister Natasha Kapoor and brother Rishab have mustered up a posse of policemen to nab Karthik Sharma, who is back in town and promising to meet his sister Priya Kapoor. Somewhere in the proceedings, Karthik – who has some explaining to do apropos his two wives, Jhanvi and Natasha, and one son – finds out that the cops are hot on his trail and starts running. His pregnant sister Priya runs after him, but collapses in pain in the middle of the street; typically, the passers-by keep passing by and pay little attention to the fallen woman. Karthik grabs his infant son and runs to the car where Ayesha – yes, the villain of this little piece – is waiting to help him make a getaway…or does she have something more slimy and nasty in mind? Aha, so he chooses to flee instead of remembering family loyalty, right? We thought that too, really!

But no, Karthik puts the child in the car and runs back to pick Priya up, bringing her to the passenger side and settling her in, the baby on her lap. He pulls Ayesha out and starts getting in to drive. And hey, the cops finally arrive! With the expected competency of onscreen policemen, one of them shoots Karthik in the shoulder and then proceeds to lose the trail as our man drives off, making a real mess of the car with his blood. In the hospital, he insists Priya is taken care of, the baby is looked after and his familial bond is the redeeming factor to his image, before he collapses in a welter of what looks suspiciously like ketchup and dies. At least, we think he is dead – a whole bunch of people stands around looking ineffective while Natasha throws herself on her (late?) husband’s chest and wails. Ram stands in the crowd looking as open-mouthedly bewildered as ever. The promos for today show the whole family turning up at the hospital and bawling….another half hour of fun is in store for us, we know!

So what happens next? We cannot wait to find out…..

Every day there’s a new drama unfolding in the Sharma and Kapoor family and frankly, we are getting a li’l tired of it

The whole melodrama in Bade Acche Lagte Hain starts on Ram Kapoor and Priya Kapoor’s wedding anniversary. Jhanvi abandons her and Karthik’s baby at the party; when Ram calls the police to hand over the kid, Priya’s brother declares the child as his and accepts his infidelity.

Shocked by the revelations, Natasha takes to drinking and suddenly develops a hatred towards everyone including her in-laws and Priya – understandable in a situation like this! But Nuts goes overboard with her drama when she tries to throw the child out of the Sharma house and when her in-laws stop her nonsensical act, she files a case of physical abuse against them…Tch tch!

Everyone expects Ram to talk sense into Chhoti (Natasha), but when emotionally blackmailed by Nuts, the stout man keeps his mouth shut. He decides to let his in-laws rot in jail to keep his sister happy. In addition to this, he sends Karthik’s illegitimate kid to an orphanage.

While all this drama is going on, the real culprit behind the whole fiasco is hiding in Singapore. He abandoned both his wives, parents and even his kid – what a man! Now both the families try to emotionally blackmail Karthik and bring him back to India.

On the one hand, there is Karthik, who cheated on his wife, lied to his family, married and cheated his second wife too and abandoned everyone and ran away. Wethinks the man needs to be punished severely. However, from an entirely different viewpoint, Natasha is wrong too, no? She aborted a kid when she was pregnant, never got punished for it, put her in-laws behind bars, is punishing an innocent newborn baby now and creating a rift between Ram and Priya.

According to sources, the fights between the Sharmas and Kapoors – obviously instigated by Ayesha – will result in not one but two divorces, Natasha and Karthik’s and Ram and Priya’s. And somehow in the whole fiasco Karthik will lose his life.

It’s a complicated situation and there is no one right answer. We are confused; what about you BollywoodLifers – who do you think is wrong, Natasha or Karthik?

Will the rock-solid love story manage to withstand the latest storm, or will things go sour soon? We have reasons to wonder….

So it has all hit the fan. Kartik Sharma, Priya Kapoor’s brother, finally revealed that he had been setting up house with Jhanvi, cheating on wife Natasha Kapoor, and had a baby with his new lady too. As a result, he left the Sharma house, leaving the baby behind, after Jhanvi had left the child with him. Confused? Wait – it gets more interesting and convoluted. Natasha takes off on a bender and spends the next couple of days drunk, ending up in hospital. And the snake in the Kapoor world turns up there to have a chat. Yes, Ayesha drops in to see Natasha and pours poison into her ear. And the gal, who has been so painfully and boringly goody goody, playing dutiful and loving bahu for too long, suddenly turns – she now refuses to have anything to do with her in-laws as long as Kartik’s baby is in the house and actually storms out of the house with it to abandon it somewhere.

So now it gets exciting. The Sharmas, Sudhir and Shipra, Priya’s parents, run after Natasha and grab the baby. In the temper tantrum struggle, she falls and hits her head. And you just know what comes next – Natasha brings in the police, saying that her in-laws had to be arrested for daughter-in-law bashing. The Sharma couple are thrown in jail – and there is a really mean and nasty cop-woman who keeps yelling for some reason – and lots of tears are shed. Priya and Ram come charging in to the rescue and more weeping and wailing ensues. Turns out that Natasha will make peace again only if the baby is given away. So Priya takes the infant to Neha and Vikram’s house and leaves it with them. Along the way, Natasha makes threats that she will make sure that Priya and Ram split…or did we hear that wrong?

Whatever is going on in Bade Acche Lagte Hain, at least it is much more fun than all the lovey dovey coohie-coo niceness that was happening on the show. We feel much better now!

Priya Kapoor’s brother Karthik has revealed his double life, courtesy sister Ayesha’s dirty tricks. What happens next?

It is back to rona dhona and lots of drama in the Kapoor khandaan. Last night had us wavering between the giggles and a gasp or four, as secrets came racing out of people’s lives. Karthik Sharma was unveiled as Jhanvi’s lover and father of her bastard son. The villain of this piece, Ayesha, does her usual evil grin thing and a little more plotting with the ever irritating mamaji. Karthik’s wife, Ram Kapoor’s sister Natasha, in shock, changes into her bad girl out on the town clothes and takes off to party, leaving mangalsutra and virtuous bahu avatar behind.

Ram heaves and huffs his ire, siding with his sister and not even seeing his wife Priya’s emotional and physical distress. And Priya, pregnant and trying to support an aching back, does a lovely little faint, causing all the women of the family to gather twittering like bemused birds around her. When Ram comes back into the room, he is quivering with rage – and there is plenty to quiver where he is concerned – and says things that, who knows, he could regret later on when he is calmer. Priya and he were married as a kind of conditional arrangement when Natasha married Karthik because she was pregnant, remember?

So to add to all this drama and to try and sort out our rather confused minds after this jhamela, we started wondering what would happen next. Will Natasha come home stinking drunk and with a toyboy in tow? Will Priya’s back pain be nothing but a strained muscle and not a threatened miscarriage, which we can sense will feature at some point? Will Ram make up with his wife and be able to erase his words in her mind with a little coochie-coo? Will Karthik sort out his marital vs extra-marital mess and bring peace back into the family? And will Ayesha finally stop twisting her mouth nastily and do some yoga or something so that she is less inclined to poke her shapely nose into other people’s lives?

Do you have a clue about any of this? If so, do tell us!

She did, and how! And in doing so, demolished rival Isha’s bid to grab Ram for herself with a big fat lie…

We told you earlier how Isha finally confessed to Ram Kapoor that she was back in the country to ‘settle down’ with the stout industrialist as husband. It comes as a huge shock to him, as he had refused to believe his wife Priya Kapoor when she told him that Isha had designs on his…err…virtue. In fact, they had a big fight about it, with Priya firmly convinced that Ram was having an affair with Isha and the fat man going kinda ballistic denying it. As a result, Priya and daughter Pihu took off for the Sharma household. And the two pined, Ram in his mansion with his glass of something soothing and Priya on the balcony of her father’s house, talking to the breeze. They finally connected and Ram was driving over to see Priya so that they could talk and sort the mess out. And then the fun started.

Ram had asked Isha to speak to Priya and tell her that there was nothing except college-time friendship between them. But when Priya asked Isha to butt out of her life and her relationship with her husband, the sexy lady let it fly. She told the legit Mrs Kapoor that it was not her, Isha, who needed to get out of the triangle, but Priya herself, since Ram had rekindled the love between himself and his college sweetie. At which point we groaned in despair, expecting another long-drawn out argument and more separation anxiety in the Kapoor marriage. Turns out we were completely off-track! Priya tells Isha that while she and Ram may fight and spend time apart, she had no doubts at all about their love for each other. And she knew full well that her husband was not going to leave her for anyone, leave alone Isha.

Dramatic pause, clashing music…Ram appears in the doorway behind Isha and hears all this. Priya has won again, and he is hers, even more than ever, if that was possible. A smile grows across his stout face.

Once the kebab mein trying to be haddi left, the coosome twosome wander off to the nearby park to walk, sit and chat. Ram makes sure that Priya knows that however fat she may become, he will always find her attractive and always love her and we are left going awwwwww as the couple cuddles on the park bench – now where was the morality police hiding, we have to wonder!

But there is a new story starting, one that may save us from a sugar overload. Ayesha is up to her usual bad lady deeds and has been attacking her brother Karthik with renewed vigour, playing her nasty little games. She is also embroiled in a daily battle with Natasha, and we cannot help but cringe at our vision of future events, when Natasha will be hurt as Ayesha gloats. For now, even as the anniversary party is being planned, Ayesha has duped Jhanvi into coming to the house to see Karthik. And how did she do that? By making an anonymous call to Jhanvi to tell her that Karthik has been badly hurt in an accident. Low blow, no?

Call it woman’s intuition or possessiveness, but it turns out that Priya Kapoor was spot on when it came to knowing just what husband Ram meant to old buddy Isha

Yes, women always know. And Priya Kapoor is no different. She has been suspecting that there is more than just college buddy-ship between her husband Ram Kapoor and his friend from way back, Isha. And she just watched and waited and wondered, though not always silently, since she spoke to her friend Neha about it and also had long soliloquies that only she herself heard. And then came the HUGE sight with Ram. The ever-loving husband and wife yelled at each other and, like all happy couples, said a lot that should never have been said, but is often thought. And Priya decides that she would run away to her parents’ home with her daughter Pihu and let the stout man stew.

But Ram has another way of dealing with the mess. He decides to visit Isha and ask her to intervene, telling Priya that there was nothing between them except for friendship that dated back to college times. Big mistake, any of us could have told him! It turns out that Isha does have serious feelings for the fat man, saying that she had gone through a miserable marriage and a nasty divorce and wanted to settle in India not with her husband, as she had always said, but with Ram. Shock, horror, amazement, total confusion – now you can just see that written large on Ram’s face as you read that, right? It was indeed. And he goes back home and cannot face his wife when she asks him to tell her what is going on. Priya and Pihu leave for the Sharma home; Ram stays home and broods. Neither husband nor wife can figure out how to deal with the situation – Ram, even though none of it is his doing and Priya, who just wants reassurance from her man.

So what happens next? We cannot sort this one out. Can you?

There’s just a li’l too much love and harmony in the Kapoor mansion – it makes us wonder where all the drama has gone!

In recent episodes of Bade Acche Lagte Hain, Ram Kapoor and Priya Kapoor have been going over the top with their romantic gestures – so much so that we’ve already been detected with diabetes. Ever since Ayesha was thrown out of the Kapoor mansion, there has been a dramatic downswing in the drama quotient and as far as we are concerned, no drama means no fun.

So in order to make up for that serious lack, the makers have finally brought Karthik Sharma back on to the scene with a new wife and baby in tow. And guess what! Ayesha is the first one to find out about Priya‘s brother’s infidelity. The conniving woman has been taking care of her affluent habits using Ram’s money allotted for Kush, but when the stout businessman learns about this, he stops the monetary flow. So now, in order to keep up her lavish lifestyle, Ayesha has decided to start extracting money from Karthik by blackmailing him.

Now we know that this will not go on for too long, since Natasha, Kartik’s wife and Ram’s sister, is quite bright, as is her brother, and of course there is Priya watching over the whole family, baby hormones or no. But who will find out first – Ram or Priya?

Wethinks it will be Ram who discovers Karthik’s illegitimate relationship and we believe that this will somehow affect his relationship with Priya. Will Ram try to get Karthik and Natasha together again, eliminating Jhanvi in some way, or will he seek a new man for his darling baby sister? Will Karthik survive Ram’s anger? Or even his sister Priya’s wrath? Guess we’ll have to wait and watch to find out, no?

BALH takes a 20-year leap – will this help the show’s TRPs? Will Ram and Priya still be loved? Will the audiences accept Pihu? Tarot takes a look…

Ram Kapoor‘s character in Bade Acche Lagte Hain, represented by the Death card, will go through numerous changes – in fact there will be some uncomfortable twists and turns. At one point he will be like the Hermit, wise and sensible yet the Seven of Cups also represents confusion plaguing his life. He will make some unrealistic decisions, making his life more difficult than expected. Temptations will draw him into making mistakes that will change his family equations.

Priya Kapoor on the other hand will initially appear happy, only to be burdened with numerous responsibilities. The Two and Nine of Swords show her having a tough time understanding why everything has gone so wrong. After months of struggle her character will pick up like the Magician card – where she will put together all the pieces and come back stronger. Her strength will keep the family together.

The young Pihu will be sorely missed, her energy and cuteness will just not be there anymore. But there’s hope; an older Pihu will, like the Ten of Cups, be a reflection of her mother. She will have the family on top of her priority list and strive to keep them together. Her character will become firm and very confident, which the audiences will identify with, hence accepting her changes very well.

This 20-year leap will initially find the audiences divided, but current viewers will enjoy the chemistry between characters and the freshness brought in. The Ace of Pentacles and Two of Cups re-affirm this, and also represent the importance of how new romances will keep the audiences engaged.

The real test are the TRPs – will new viewers attach themselves to the show? Although the Knight of Pentacles does show a steady start, cards such as the Ace of Wands emphasise the need for quick changes in story line to maintain and increase ratings. There will be a dip in TRPs after three months, which will prove to be difficult to pick up from. Hence, some tarot advice – staying truer to the story and not losing the essence of family ties will bring the show better success. The Empress further advises the need to keep women at the centre of the storyline.

Learn more about our tarot reader Shruti Chopra

There will be an entrant on Ekta Kapoor’s popular show who is all set to mess up the equation between our happy portly couple

Rakshanda Khan is all set to make an entry in Bade Acche Lagte Hain as Ram Kapoor’s close friend. Priya Kapoor, who has been on the edge of her emotions lately, will be seen getting extremely jealous ‘coz of the closeness her hubby shares with Rakshanda.

Now the plot gets interesting; although Ram is head over heels in love with Priya, he will bond with Rakshanda, which invariable will not go down too well with his two-month pregnant wife. Bordering on emotional melodrama, Priya will soon raise an objection to their budding friendship…tch tch!

Ram, on the other hand, will love this possessiveness and add to Priya’s woes – naughty boy! However, when things get out of hand, he will try to make amends, but will he succeed or not remains to be seen.

Now, will Priya’s new possessive nature create a rift between the happy couple or will it just be an interim break from all the extra love we have been seeing? Whatever the case, we just hope that the 20-year leap is not based on this so-called rift between our favourite jodi.