Kingdom of the Soap Queen The World of Balaji Telefilms

Kovid Gupta

HarperCollins India,

240 pages, Rs. 299

This is the story of Balaji Telefilms, the biggest television production house in the country, which the producer Ekta Kapoor founded as a seventeen-year-old working from her father’s garage and built up into a mammoth entertainment firm. Gupta chronicles the creation of the iconic tele-serial characters of Tulsi and Parvati, how Balaji changed the demographics of television viewership in India, the social impact of its soap operas, and the company’s very successful and high-profile foray into cinema.