Telly Tadka - Gul Khan Talks About Geet

Q. 1 Let's ask you the most commonly asked question that's debated on fan forums as to why Geet doesn't garner the kind of TRP despite its immensely loyal fan base?

The problem is that the fans who see the show don't watch it during the original time slot. That does not add to the trps. People who watch it are not time bound. Women do different things during the original time slot, they could be serving food or doing their household work and they might end up catching a repeat. So that could be one of the reasons I could think of.

Q. 2 Most fans wanted Dev to be punished for what he did to Geet. But she has forgiven him and let him go scot free. What do you as the maker have to say about this?

Agreed that the crime that Dev committed was premeditated, but at this point I would like to mention that, when we started off GEET was very a dark story. Her own family wanted her killed. Her husband had disowned her. She then left her family. Naintara was thrown out. But then when we took the negative element out, the show worked for us.

We decided to add magnanimity to Geet's character. She realised she had Maan by her side and he accepted her with someone else's baby. That gave her the strength of character.  We also realised people started enjoying and watching the show because of the positivity. Too much of negativity, would have given rise to other repercussions in the story. After all Dev was Maans brother and that could have had other outcomes. If we would take out Dev, Dadi would be upset. Geet would always be the person who took the brother away from the family.

Q.3 Is it always necessary to tell a story with a social issue or a message as the backdrop?

When the show started, it was certainly on a social issue but that was because the channel wanted it that way. We only developed the plot accordingly. The channel was keen on doing a different kind of a story telling, which was if we can call it soapy. The story at that point was very much Geet centric and about the issues surrounding her. But the moment we realised, it wasn't working to our level of expectations, we switched it around.

Q. 4 But wasn't experimenting with a Genre like that a risk? What made you pick the plot of honor killing?

Yes, it was. But we were very excited as it was a different story. It was a very hard hitting show. Personally after the research even I felt very close to the subject and really wanted to make a show on honor killing. Even today if you look at the statistics we have 5000 girls being dumped at the Punjab airport. It is a huge issue. We were passionate about it to start off with, but the way we presented it didn't work out and we had to change the way we told our story.

Q. 5 Do low budgets restrict creativity?

They do. If you don't have the budgets then you can't shoot the way you want.  It's not fair. But our industry has its constraints.

Q. 6 Is that a reason why, though there was so much grandeur initially shown on Geet, we don't get to see that anymore?

Not really, with Geet we never had budget problems. When Geet went through all those phases because we had to go through a whole lot of casting. There was a house, already, and then we had to re-do the entire set up and there were other compulsions.

Q. 7 Is it true that the Channel Authority always tries to override the decisions of the Production House when it comes to the plot?

I wouldn't agree with that at all. Especially in Geet, the Channel team which had Rohini Singh was always very involved. She worked as much as PH. The way we turned the entire story around was only thanks to the team work. The channel and the Production House always worked in sync. We have had sleepless nights, done screenplays till 4 am in the morning and shot the same day. Without Rohini's team and my team Geet wouldn't have been possible.

Fans at times speculate and think this way since they are passionately involved with the show and hence they react.

Q. 8There have been recent rumors about the channel going in for a revamp, resulting in axing some of its existing shows.

As per the channel policy, if they choose to revamp something, there would be nothing wrong in it.

Q. 9 So Geet is ending anytime soon?

Definitely not.

Reporter - Swati Ghosh

Telly Tadka