Fanfic for the Indian 2023 Serial, "Choo Kar Mere Maan Ko"

Reason for writing this: I did some channel-surfing and arrived at a random indian soap opera. Then I got invested. This is 45 episodes later.

Basic Plotline: Deepa is a dark-skinned girl who is kind and compassionate. One day, her mother dies, and fearing for her upbringing, her father agrees to marry a cruel light-skinned woman, Ratna, who brings along her daughter, Urmi. The dynamics of the family change rapidly - Ratna manipulates Deepa's father, and uses his money, house and resources to spoil Urmi and herself. Deepa becomes akin to a servant in her own home. Every day she is disrespected by her wicked stepmother.

Time passes.

Urmi enters into a beauty contest and wins. She is now 'Miss Kolkata' and this title draws the attention of a rich businessman's wife, Labanya Sengupta. Somehow, Urmi is engaged to Labanya's youngest son, Joy, but her princess upbringing makes her ignore the guy in favor of his older brother Suraj. Suraj is a 'celebrity doctor', well-known, and Urmi falls in love with him. Instead of breaking off her relationship with Joy, Urmi decides to blackmail Suraj in an attempt to break his spirit, just like Ratna did to Deepa's father. She doesn't know how love and respect works; she simply tries to copy her mother.

Urmi genuinely believes that her weird black-mail thing is making Suraj become aware of her - but in reality, it just makes him realize how much he dislikes her personality. By chance, he meets Deepa and falls madly in love with her. Deepa, realizing how bad it would seem for her image, ignores Suraj, but he is persistent. He shows in many ways that he does care for her and that he wants to marry her. Unfortunately for them, Labanya Sengupta values light skin in her family and as a result, vehemently despises Deepa. She even plots with Ratna to throw Deepa out into the streets, and her beta Dad only really grows a nerve around this time. Ratna also tries to actively find a physically abusive ugly man so she can make Deepa marry him, but this fails as well. Deepa realizes that the only way for her to escape this is to marry Suraj.

On the day of Urmi's birthday, Suraj decides to elope with Deepa (get married). The hilarious thing is, Urmi thinks he's finally been worn down and that he know wants to marry her. HA!

They get married and show up to the party. Urmi is heartbroken, Labanya's racism is so strong that the idea of Deepa's blackness entering her family gene pool nearly kills her. I'm not even kidding. She's so shocked she faints and gains retrograde amnesia for 5 minutes, and everyone else is too shocked to speak.

Labanya hallucinates; her racism causes her to get severely delirious, she stops taking care of herself gets a gun, and gets a severe case of crazy eyes. (which was HILARIOUS to watch.)

She disownes Suraj but decides to take him back in later.

Joy, suffering from self-esteem issues from always being compared to his brother, grows depressed and blames his brother for ruining his engagement to Urmi. He doesn't know that Urmi is betraying him, and he also thinks that Urmi is a good person.

After that, the family Sengupta gets to know Deepa, and finds that they like her. Joy marries Urmi in retaliation; then he figures out her horrible personality, but it's too late.

Suraj's best friend from Medical School, Mishka Sen, learns that he got married and grows enraged. She is light-skinned, cheerful and has a good career - someone that Labanya wished Suraj had married. Mishka decides to stir up trouble in the Sengupta family - which succeeds sometimes and fails other times.

A random kidnapping plotline happens; Suraj is taken by a serial killer, who killed Labanya's parents. Yeah, turns out, the reason why Labanya's so incredibly RACIST, is because her parents' killer was black and he happened to be a deeply horrible person. So she internalized this moment, and subsequently hates darker-skinned Indians for the rest of her life (she's like, at least 40).

Anyway, Deepa throws a brick at the serial killer's head, and he is apprehended by the police. Now Labanya no longer hates Deepa, and can no longer twist her logic to find new ways to hate her because of her skin color. She acknowledges Deepa, and Deepa, without asking for reward or saying 'I Told You So Dragon Lady', reunites Labanya with her estranged oldest daughter, who left the house because Labanya was mean to her granddaughter (i.e., Labanya's granddaughter is dark-skinned and the grandma couldn't look her in the eye in disgust ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.).

Labanya, having learned her lesson, thanks Deepa for making her family whole again. Everybody cheers and Suraj, Deepa's husband, is deeply moved that she did this for him. Unfortunately for him, Mishka has made another attempt at ruining Deepa since she's such an unbelievably crazy individual.

Her own father told her to leave these married folks alone and she ignored him. She monologues into the camera with English lines and smiles menacingly.

She's honestly so annoying I want to scream!

The actor's good though.

Anyway, Deepa wins a Flower Arranging Competition and meets Kabir, a poet, who is basically the male version of Deepa. They have overlapping interests, overlapping personalities, etc.

ANYWAY, Mishka senses a chance to make Suraj jealous and stalks Deepa like a crazy person. Seriously. Girl is like a bloodhound, it's wild. Isn't she supposed to be a doctor? How does she have this much free time?

She makes a bunch of incriminating photos and sends them to Suraj, along with faking his tests to make him think he's impotent and thus making him question the true father of his unborn baby ( SPOILER ALERT IT'S YOURS!)

(If Mishka isn't destroyed in the next few episodes ...*clenches fist*)

If that isn't enough, Urmi was ALSO pregnant but lost her baby (i have no idea who did it: if she jumped down the stairs and killed it or if Mishka put oil on the stairs, it's one or the other) Now Urmi is PISSED. She's mad that Deepa's in a happy marriage with the man she's in love with and has gained the respect of the family, so she does crazy things to get attention back.

She learns about the Kabir situation and wants to capitalize on it. Honestly, I feel like this show's genre changed and I'm suddenly watching a Chinese Revenge Drama because suddenly the female lead has to prove herself and challenge others through complicated plans and gain back the love of the male lead, who, let's be real, is starting to annoy me. Which is the point of the fic.

ENJOY!