In hindsight, it’s a normal household with the usual problems. Though they are at loggerheads, bickering about each other, and even pushing the kids to take sides, the affection between them always wins in the end. Balu invariably converts every chore into a mishap-be it buying a car or making pressure-cooked chicken biryani, and no one seems to hold it against him. Every crisis is turned into a slice of comedy-the kitchen stove isn’t working it begins with a fight and ends with the wife and husband sharing a plate of idlies. Though the onus of the finances and the housework falls on Neelu, they don’t make a big deal out of it. The writing is consistently sharp, grappling with issues that are often grave and topical but it gets treated with a humour that leaves you smiling. But in a crisis, they all miraculously come together. There are no idols in the picture, parents aren’t put on a pedestal and the children have a voice though they are also put in their place when need be. What keeps the marriage alive is this impartiality-despite the role reversal and how in a conditioned family structure, this could amount to a shift in power towards the one who has the higher financial stake in the household. There are days when Balu scores over Neelu and vice versa and the children, though they make fun of their father, seem to maintain the same irreverence for their mother as well. Though the house is singlehandedly run by Neelu, who works in a private firm and Balu is practically good-for-nothing, the narrative keeps the husband-wife equation on equal ground.
Every day at a corner of the house, Balu will be immersed in work, with several handy tools. Though he claims to be a whiz, the fact remains that he is not really known to repair any gadgets from the time we see him.
Balachandran or Balu is an independent electronics technician who considers himself too smart for his own good. The show, which premiered on December 14, 2015, chronicles the daily humdrum lives of a middle-income family comprising husband Balachandran Thampi, wife Neelima and their five children-Vishnu, Lakshmy, Keshav, Shivani and Parvathy.
It’s this unpredictability and irreverence that endears Uppum Mulakum (Salt and Pepper) to us, the sitcom on Flowers TV that is all set to complete 1000 episodes. And they dissolve into peals of laughter. It’s a scene that had the promise of falling into an emotionally charged, melodramatic moment in the usual soap opera, with the accompaniment of blaring background music, and spinning close-up shots.īut then, as the family remains on the couch, silent and fuming, Balu sneaks back into the scene, with a sheepish grin and wonders if he can come back. A visibly hurt Balu talks about leaving the house. The miffed children and Neelu angrily call him out. After a round of verbal thrashing from Neelu, Balu enters their home with guilt. In one of the earlier episodes, Balachandran Thampi (Biju Sopanam) has brought himself a second-hand Maruti car with the money his wife Neelima (Nisha Sarang) has lent him and it turns out that the car isn’t working properly.