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NEW DELHI: The cacophonic snarl of Chandni Chowk is a planet away from the silent, sprawling acres of chikoo in Dahanu, a two-and-a-half-hour zip from Mumbai.
That's the real-life sasural of TV bahu Tulsi Virani now portraying herself as the Delhi beti . Smriti Malhotra Irani is married to Zubin, scion of one of the oldest Irani families which coaxed orchards out of this tribal wilderness a century ago.
Down-to-earth, it's as culturally far away from the world of a TV soap where heroes die only if their contract expires.
Zubin Irani is a character himself. He left Mumbai where Smriti's real-life saas comes from to return to his rural patrimony. He also left his first wife Mona when he fell under the spell of this former beauty contestant.
Reality begins to resemble a TV serial since Mona was a model coordinator, had wanted to offer the beauty contestant a job and ended up handing Smriti her own husband on a platter.
Local society says the two women are great friends, and the transfer of power was bloodless. This rather spoilsportishly deviates from the script, which would have called for hysteria, threat, seething, scheming, five retakes and glycerin.
Rather than whispering about her as the Other Woman, Dahanu's Iranis quite bask in her celebrity, pointing out to visitors the ancestral orchard and Zubin's restaurant on the ramshackle main street.
If his venerable forebears brought the Central American chikoo to India, Zubin has brought chicken malai tikka to Dahanu, and this correspondent vou-ches for its succulence. Her encounter with his star-wife on Smriti's TV talk show is somewhat less memorable.
That's the real-life sasural of TV bahu Tulsi Virani now portraying herself as the Delhi beti . Smriti Malhotra Irani is married to Zubin, scion of one of the oldest Irani families which coaxed orchards out of this tribal wilderness a century ago.
Down-to-earth, it's as culturally far away from the world of a TV soap where heroes die only if their contract expires.
Zubin Irani is a character himself. He left Mumbai where Smriti's real-life saas comes from to return to his rural patrimony. He also left his first wife Mona when he fell under the spell of this former beauty contestant.
Reality begins to resemble a TV serial since Mona was a model coordinator, had wanted to offer the beauty contestant a job and ended up handing Smriti her own husband on a platter.
Local society says the two women are great friends, and the transfer of power was bloodless. This rather spoilsportishly deviates from the script, which would have called for hysteria, threat, seething, scheming, five retakes and glycerin.
Rather than whispering about her as the Other Woman, Dahanu's Iranis quite bask in her celebrity, pointing out to visitors the ancestral orchard and Zubin's restaurant on the ramshackle main street.
If his venerable forebears brought the Central American chikoo to India, Zubin has brought chicken malai tikka to Dahanu, and this correspondent vou-ches for its succulence. Her encounter with his star-wife on Smriti's TV talk show is somewhat less memorable.
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