It’s perhaps one of the most awaited reboot stories of recent times in Indian television. Between Smriti Irani’s return to acting on the small screen as you, Tulsi, and your producer Ektaa Kapoor’s willingness to warm the kitchen fires in the Virani household, this is a unique experiment indeed. The reason for the surging curiosity around your promos may have something to do with your anxiety-busting smile; your Tulsi plant prayer act in a Bandhini or brocade sari with a seedha pallu, your sindoor unmissable. But it is not because India is breathless to spectate saas-bahu shenanigans in the age of female resistance in TV or cinematic fiction.

It is because an assertive-articulate, former cabinet minister is playing you, the protagonist. It twists the plot outside what happens on the small screen.

Smriti Irani, as Tulsi may have been India’s most loved TV bahu in the two decades old version of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KSBKBT) on Star Plus, your life script which she played to great applause. Where guesses go, she may be returning as the “saas” for the wheel to turn and the intrigue to build. But this reboot comes stacked with messages that could quickly get cross-wired.

First, The Politics

Cultural commentators, like this writer and critics who write about television, media, and cinema may have to stow away our awe or cynicism about her as a politician to be able to honestly critique your role. Irani is a member of the ruling political party which drives power her way.

And while she may know how to take bats and bouquets with her sharp wit and talent at repartee, commenting on a politician-actor will be a test of how well some of us do our jobs.

That said, she is not just another politician like many of her colleagues—Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha, Raj Babbar, Jaya Prada, Kirron Kher, Vinod Khanna or Kangana Ranaut. None of them rose to lead Union ministries or even become chief ministers like the late J. Jayalalitha or NT Rama Rao.

Irani’s political portfolios include the I&B ministry (State, Independent charge), Textiles, Human Resource Development, and then in the 17th Lok Sabha, she became the Union Minister for Women and Child Development and Minority Affairs. Those are major offices. During these powerful stints, she made friends and foes, scored likes and dislikes, made big strides (the giant slayer of Amethi who defeated Congress scion Rahul Gandhi) and then lost an election. She vanquished her opponents, formulated policies, launched gender equity platforms, spoke at the World Economic Forum with heft, stamped approvals and disapprovals. Even before that, she was a BJP karyakarta (worker) who went on to become a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. That kind of political resume will, in all probability, lead to a political split in the viewership. The reactivity, good or not, will be directed at her. You will have to rise above her.

Indian Women in Cinema OTT: The Rising

But that’s the obvious run of the battle. As Irani told The Times of India, “There is nothing television can throw me that politics hasn’t.” She is right. But in a wrong sort of way. Her skills as an actor, her screen presence or the way she delivers dialogues are proven beyond doubt. In fact, the screen writer may find it hard to keep with Irani’s evolved finesse as a speaker-orator. Yet what this reboot may throw at her—both the politician and the actor—is the impossible-to-refute transition of the central female role and the new narrative in Indian cinema, television or OTT content. The rising—of the female voice, angry and ambitious. Almost every recent work of creative fiction on the big or small screen, with deeper penetration than ever before to Tier2 and Tier3 towns have female protagonists who want to be seen as who they are—not as wives, sisters, mothers or bahus. A 20-year-graph of this transition traced after the conclusion of KSBKBT to 2025, would in fact, be a very long walk.

But let’s take some quick examples. From Mirzapur’s female Bahubali, Gajagamini (Golu) Gupta to Sonakshi Sinha’s Dalit cop Anjali Bhat in Dahaad; from the village girls of Laapata Ladies or the ladies of Lipstick Under My Burqa headbanging to Miley Cyrus, the scamsters of Jamtara to Neena Gupta’s asserting pradhan in Panchayat.

Delhi Crime, Masaan, Santosh (still awaiting release in India), or the globally recognised All We Imagine as Light, sparkles with women who have shifted the spotlight from Tulsi to Golu, metaphorically and literally. They stand up to patriarchy, swear, seek pleasure, kill, deceive, are good to be seen as grey instead of valourised as pink, black or white. It’s a new stereotype perhaps. In some cases, the former hero of resistance against the establishment is now interpreted through the female actor on television. Who rebels against the family or society. She is the angry young “man” of OTT. In representation—it is a revolution. It echoes all over India in real life, shifting audiences towards what women can be and do. The argument that “if women see it” only then they can “be it” is undeniable. It is a powerful fact that your actor, the politician Smriti Irani has stood for this very female empowerment in her work.

The New, New Tulsi?

We don’t know if your new Tulsi act too is grey, anti-heroine stuff. You may be more tinted to our times than your appearance in the promos suggests. You were never just a benign wife to begin. Never just a pretty, pleasant bahu—you had your resistance, your rebellion, you were your own person, but it didn’t score in memory as your label.

Now? There are post-TikTok female audiences watching you. Who broke the glass ceiling of traditionalism in content through their crazy-bold videos, taking “entertainment” out of the hands of urban filmmakers or documentary writers. They not only shunned saas-bahu pivots but turned them into laughable memes, especially the small town creators. The present-day Instagrammers, girls from small towns or big homes, from urban villages or those who live in mental ghettos, all like non-conformist women. Or so the studies indicate. The ascent of the anti-heroine in OTT, the rise of the female YouTuber, and the phone-first consumption model of entertainment—are realities you are taking on this time.

The Numbers Game

We know that Star Plus is India’s number one TV channel and has remained so for 11 years—after you left. It is now consumed averagely by 50 million viewers every week. And its top shows circle around stories that Kyunki viewers and your saas-bahu tribe loved. Ahh.

All the same in 2024, India had 547.3 million OTT consumers. YouTube has 2.70 billion active users and more than 8 million subscribers. There are other formats; devices enabled by affordable data plans that have changed what women watch.

Given these plot twists in a trajectory directed as much by audiences, your comeback is loaded. Look forward.