Saath Nibhaana Saathiya


Saath Nibhaana Saathiya is a Hindi-language Indian television drama series, produced by Rashmi Sharma Telefilms. The show premiered on 3 May 2010 on Star Plus. The drama is set in Rajkot and filmed in Mumbai.
It initially starred Giaa Manek, Rucha Hasabnis, Mohammad Nazim, Vishal Singh and Rupal Patel. Manek was replaced by Devoleena Bhattacharjee. The show later focused on the leads' daughters played by Tanya Sharma and Sonam Lamba.
The series revolves around the Modi family, who live in a mansion in Rajkot. It explores morals and values of a typical Gujarati joint family, when cousins Gopi and Rashi marry two Modi sons, Ahem and Jigar. The storyline took several leaps including one year leap in June 2013, eight years leap in February 2014, and a further ten years in March 2015, four years in May 2016 and three months in March 2017. The series ended on 23 July 2017, completing 2,184 episodes. It was replaced by Tu Sooraj, Main Saanjh Piyaji.

Plot

The story starts with 2 female cousins Gopi Kapadia and Rashi Shah. Gopi is raised by her maternal uncle Jeetu Shah and aunt Urmila i.e. Rashi's parents since the death of her parents. She is illiterate, naive, kind and shy. Rashi is educated, self-confident, vivacious and cunning by nature.
Rashi resents Gopi for the latter's kindness and good nature which everybody loves. She treats her as a slave and humiliate her on a daily basis. Rich and strict, Kokila Modi chooses Gopi to marry her son Ahem, the hard-working CEO of Modi Corporation Ltd.
Despite having a girlfriend Anita, Ahem marries Gopi on Kokila's wish. Rashi marries his fun-loving and warm-hearted paternal cousin Jigar through deception. Ahem who hates Gopi believes her to be a gold-digger as she knew his relationship with Anita.
Gradually, Kokila transforms Gopi into confident and smarter so that she is accepted by Aham, who and Gopi get closer to each other and their love blossoms. Urmila and Rashi create difficulties for Gopi. Later both cousins are happily accepted into their family.
Gopi gives birth to Meera. Rashi delivers twin-boys Sahir and Samar. Gopi finds her long-lost alive parents. Her younger pampered and selfish sister Radha falls in love with Anita's brother Umang who vows to avenge the Modi family for Anita's bitterness.
Umang marries Radha despite being already married to his accomplice Tripti who kills him out of jealousy. Holding Gopi responsible for Umang's demise, Radha drops Meera in a river who is presumed dead. Gopi is blamed for the incident and gets thrown out of the Modi Mansion.

8 years later

Gopi is raising her second daughter Vidya single-handedly. Kokila and Ahem are in depression. Rashi is the new matriarch of Modi family. Eventually, Gopi finds out Meera never died, but grew up as an orphan and retrieves her. The whole family is reunited.
Radha's true colours are revealed and she is sent to jail. Later, Rashi sacrifices her life to save Gopi from the latter's obsessed colleague Anurag Joshi, who was in love with her. Urmila gets Jigar engaged and later married to her brother Jai Mehta's daughter Paridhi. Radha returns, tricking Jigar into sleeping with her and gets pregnant.
Soon Radha delivers a daughter, also named Rashi. She threatens to kill baby Rashi and tries to destroy Modi family, starting by pushing Gopi into river who survies and stabs and kills her, as there was no other option left. Gopi is sentenced to 14 years in jail.

10 years later

Gopi's sentence is reduced due to her good behaviour. She returns to Modi family. Junior Rashi is unaccepted by Paridhi. Urmila is mentally disabled. Ahem lives in Mumbai with Meera, Vidya and another woman Mansi Raheja. Meera is independent and selfish. Vidya is kind and caring.
Ahem, Meera and Vidya blame Gopi for abandoning them. Eventually, Gopi manages to reunite the family. However, Meera refuses to accept and creates many problems for her. Kokila's childhood friend Gaura enters the story to take revenge for her brother's death, caused by Kokila's mistake.
Oblivious to Gaura's intentions, Vidya's marriage is arranged to her grandson Shravan Suryavanshi. Gaura secretly gets Meera married to her son Dharam i.e. Shravan's father. Equally involved in the revenge game with Gaura, Dharam traps Meera in their plan by constantly instigating her against Modi family.
Gaura brainwashes Meera and made her hate the Modis severely. Dharam and Meera keep challenging each other leading to occasional minor banters, due to their age gap and difference in opinions. With much of Meera's time being spent in proximity with Dharam, the hatred soon begins to turn into attraction between them.
Dharam and Meera gradually fall in love. Meera leaves the house returning to her family because of Gaura's behaviour towards her. She decides to marry her ex-boyfriend Sanskaar Patel. However Dharam arrives and professes his love. He and Meera get remarried. Ahem dies in an accident.

4 years later

Gopi is extremely depressed since Ahem's demise having not smiled or talked for 4 years. Vidya has a 4 year-old daughter Priyal but is hated by Meera who believes that Vidya was responsible for her miscarriage. The real culprit is actually Dharam's daughter Naiya, who done it for the sake of inheritance.
Kokila decides to accept Dr. Krishna Raheja's marriage proposal for Gopi, who recovers and refuses. Krishna is revealed to be Mansi's brother, who vows revenge on Gopi for separating Mansi from Ahem. Kokila hires Jaggi, Ahem's illegitimate look-alike half brother, to save Gopi from Krishna's evil plans and is successful.
Gopi later marries Jaggi to save him from the traps of an evil Radhika. The family accepts their relationship. Gaura returns once again to destroy Modi family and pays Chanda, the surrogate mother of Meera and Dharam's twins, to create troubles for the family and kills her when she attempts to expose her.
Gaura blames Vidya and tries to frame Kokila for the attempted murder of Jaggi's mother Urvashi. Eventually, her crimes are caught. The Modis rescue Sita Rathod from a forced marriage whose stepmother Bhavani falls in love with Dharam and compels Meera to leave the house.
Gopi learns that Vidya is not her daughter; there was a baby swap. Her child is Ramakant, a spoiled and selfish young man of Singapore. She goes there with Jaggi to retrieve Ramakant who heavily troubles the Modis but is unable to return to Singapore due to his criminal record. The Modis arrange his marriage to Sita.
Ramakant elopes with and marries Sameera, who is Anita's daughter, wanting revenge from the Modis blaming them for Anita's death. She joins hands with Bhavani to ruin the Modi family. Meera returns. All the crimes of Bhavani and Sameera are revealed. Ramakant also apologises for his past mistakes and marries Sita. Everybody lives happily ever after.

Cast

Main

Casting

In May 2012, lead Giaa Manek signed on to appear on the reality show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa on rival network Colors TV. Saath producers objected, noting that Manek was under contract with their network and that doing a reality series could tarnish her onscreen image as a soft-spoken character. The producers took their complaints to the Association of Motion Pictures and TV Programme Producers and to Cine and TV Artistes’ Association for arbitration. Members of CINTAA had meetings with Manek and asked her to quit the reality show. Manek declined and Star replaced her with Devoleena Bhattacharjee.
On January 2014, Rucha Hasabnis playing Rashi confirmed that she planned to quit the series any time in that year. However, owing to her marriage she decided to quit acting and she exited on July 2014 with her character being killed.
In May 2016, Mohammed Nazim playing Ahem quit the show and his character was killed off in the show. The reason from a source stated, "Since the existing key actors aired their reservations about playing grandparents, the creatives had no option but to put the time leap on hold. Something drastic needed to be done to liven up the storyline. After brainstorming, the best idea seemed bumping off Ahem's character, so a new man could be introduced in protagonist Gopi's life to take the story forward,"
Khalid Siddiqui was cast opposite Bhattacharjee as Krishna in May 2016. As their story was not well received by the viewers, with a decrease in ratings, in July 2016, Nazim was made to re-enter the series as Jaggi, a look-a-like of Ahem and the story focussed on him and Bhattacharjee.
On September 2015, Lovely Sasan playing Paridhi quit the series as she did not want to play the role of a mother. However, on popular demand, when the makers approached her, she agreed and returned back in December 2015.

Filming

Based on Gujarat backdrop, the series was mainly filmed at sets at Mira road near Mumbai. In December 2012, a sequence was shot at Bhuj, Gujarat for 10 days. In March 2013, a sequence was shot at Madh Island.

Adaptations

Saath Nibhaana Saathiya has spawned several different language remakes including Pudhcha Paaul, Deivam Thandha Veedu, Chandanamazha, Amritavarshini and Bodhuboron. All the versions became successful ones being one of the most watched TV programmes in their respective regions, crossing 1000+ episodes except Tamil version with 992 episodes.
Saath Nibhaana Saathiya was dubbed into Telugu as Kodala Kodala Koduku Pellamaa on Star MAA.
Internationally, it airs in Sri Lanka dubbed into Sinhala as Mage Sanda Obai on Swarnavahini. In Indonesia, it began airing on ANTV from 26 September 2016 under the title Gopi but was airing from Monday to Friday at 3:00 pm.

Reception

Ratings

Initially starting with low viewership in May 2010, it increased gradually and also became one of the top rated Hindi GEC at that time. As in November 2010, it occupied the top position with 5.3 TVR.
In the first week of 2011, it was the most watched Hindi GEC with 6.3 TVR. In week 50 of 2011, at December, the series garnered its highest rating of 7.58 TVR, being most watched Hindi GEC in that week, being the first series to garner that rating in its 7:00 pm slot. In week ending 3 December 2011, it maintained its top position garnering 6.26 TVR. Overall, it was the most watched Indian Hindi television show of 2011.
It maintained its first position in first week of 2012 garnering 6 TVR. On week 19 2012, it occupied first position with 5+ TVR, beating Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai which was in that position the previously week. In the last six months, the ratings of the series dipped averaging about 6 TVR to 3+ TVR, being one of the most watched Hindi GEC.
On June 2013, it was the sixth most watched Hindi GEC fiction with a trp of 2.6. Overall, during 2013, it became the seventh most watched Indian Hindi Television program with an average of 6.4 million and peak of 8.7 million viewership.
On week 49 of 2014, it was in third position with 3.9 TVR. Overall, it still continued to maintain its position in the weekly list of top 10 Hindi GECs during 2014.
On week 32 of 2015, it was the most watched with 4 TVR while the previous week, it shared the first position with Kumkum Bhagya garnering 3.8 TVR. In 2015, overall it maintained its weekly position in top ten watched Hindi GEC ranging between 3.5 and 4 TVR.
In week 35 of 2016, it occupied second position with 10.68 million viewership.

Critics

It was acclaimed by Hindustan Times for redefining the 7:00pm slot as a prime time.

Impact

The clip from an episode where the lead character Gopi washes a laptop went viral and was subjected to various trolls and criticism.

Awards