MungeriLal Ke Haseen Sapne (Old Doordarshan TV Serial)
One of the most hilarious shows aired on Doordarshan back in late 80s was Mungerilal. The show was a pure comedy show that revolved around a common man. The show was based on dreams of a common man yet it was perfectly relatable with practical life. It was the time when the television was evolving from traditional shows to new genres of shows. Unlike earlier times late 80s came up with infinite numbers of episodes. Few shows lasted for one year or more.
Mungerilal was one of those shows that came and hit the screen to entertain people to the core. The characters and the actors had made everyone love the show and hooked to the screen for long 25 minutes. Mungerilal ke haseen sapne was an adaptation from the ace novel The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber. The character sketch and his situation was taken from the novel but the creator had given huge input to make it relate to our daily life.
Plot
The story of the show was based on a common man, Mungerilal. Mungerilal was a clerk in a small office and had a common life. He got married to a woman, mrs. Moongerilal who was unfortunately quite a bossy lady. Moongerilal had to face a lot of hurdle in his daily life at home since he got married. On the other his father-in-law was another pain to deal with. He was in police service and always made sure to taunt Moongerilal about his achievements and how Moongerilal is just a clerk and so unsuccessful in his life.
Problem weren’t ended there. He could not stand his boss in the office. The boss was too quite bossy and used to suppress him every now and then to make him feel more miserable. The only thing that makes him little better despite having so many problems in personal and professional life was his lady colleague.
One day Moongerilal started dreaming about his life. He dreamt of having a better life where he was a successful man achieving every height of success in front of his father-in-law and wife. The story started from there when Moongerilal used to enjoy his dreams more than the reality. As we know dreams don’t have any restriction, he had seen himself having affair with his lady office colleague as well.
Each episode of the show brought new issues in Moongerilal’s life and alongside his dreams about how he is dealing with the situation and how he had successfully managed to solve every problem he was encountering with.
Relevance Today
The problems of a common man remain same for every generation. May be the face of it has changed a bit, but the essence of it is still the same. The show, Moongerilal, through immense comedy showed a common man’s desire to have something and what he had actually got in real. We all suffer from same problem. Some people are not happy with their job, some are unhappy in personal life, some have both problems – we generally take virtual life’s help to escape from these day to day issues.
We all have dreams to get something that we know not possible to get. But dreams do not cost anything right? So we get happy to see things in our dreams at least for once we feel complete with the things that we really want but can’t get. This show showed the same thing. The best part of the show was the comedy angle. The director had taken the simplest way to depict the life of a common man. It could be a heavy family drama with loads of emotion by the creator chose comedy over drama so that people from all generation and age can easily relate them to the show.
| Important Details about the show | |||
| Name of the show | Mungeri Lal ke sapne | ||
| Country | India | ||
| Language | Hindi | ||
| Subject | Comedy / family drama | ||
| Banner (production house) | Drishtikon Audio Video Ltd. & Tulika Vision | ||
| Director | Prakash Jha | ||
| Creator | Niraj Kumar | ||
| Producer | |||
| Story writer | Manohar Shyam Jha | ||
| Dialogues written by | Manohar Shyam Jha | ||
| Official site address | http://www.prakashjhaproductions.com/mungerilal.html | ||
| Telecast Details | |||
| Telecast Date | 1989 | ||
| Aired on | Doordarshan | ||
| Telecast episodes | |||
| Episode length | 23 minutes | ||
| Telecast season no | 1 | ||
| Cast Details | |||
| Character Name | Real name | ||
| Mungerilal | Raghubir Yadav | ||
| Mrs. Mungerilal | Ruma Ghose | ||
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