The Ghaziabad-based Katarias have a sole earning member. Ajay (Rajesh Tailang) is a lawyer whose earnings, and patience, is stretched thin by the antics of his permanently bickering teenage children, Naina (Tanya Sharma) and her younger brother Bharat (Aditya Shukla). Ajay’s wife Sushma (Sheeba Chadha) handles the house, one eye on the never-ending work in the kitchen, and another on the sewing machine, which has been lying neglected for years.
What if she opens a longed-for boutique? That would bring in much-needed extra cash. The kids join in, with a couple of madcap schemes. But nothing works. The squabbling siblings have to share a room, while the one that’s freed up, is rented out. The tenant (Keshav Sadhna) turns out to be a good-looking fellow, whom Naina starts batting her eyelids at. Turns out that he has troubles of his own, revealed in a most unconvincing manner.
The nicest thing one can say about Bakaiti is that the seven episodes are mercifully short, and could have been scrunched into half that, especially when the set-up is nothing but repetitive loops: how many heated exchanges can you hear between brother and sister without them sounding the same?
The strongest elements of a slight series like this one comes up for air only once in a while: how a family of four (five if you count Sushma’s always-on-the-phone father, played by Ramesh Rai) in these times finds it hard to manage on one income, how higher education of the kind that Naina has set her heart on, can get them out of the rut, and how hard it can be to part with ancestral property, something that Ajay’s younger brother (Parvinder Jit Singh) keeps harping on.
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Both the actors who play the teenagers come into their own towards the end, with Tailang and Chadha holding the fort, building on the comfort they have created as a pair in Bandish Bandits.
Bakaiti cast: Rajesh Tailang, Sheeba Chadha, Tanya Sharma, Aditya Shukla, Ramesh Rai, Parvinder Jit Singh, Keshav Sadhna
Bakaiti director: Ameet Guptha
Bakaiti rating: Two stars
