"I get a kic when people react to my characters."
If entertainment is queen of the ice age, Ekta Kapoor is its princess. But like in all fairy tales, she too had to go via the ugly-duckling stage-when every star kid had big-budget films, a fan-following and death threats to boot. When she told people about her wor and watched the interest in their eyes die out. Well, it only made Kapoor get bac to some serious wor .
The daughter of Hindi movie star Jitendra is creative director with the family-run Balaji Telefilms-a TV production company that has seen its share of struggles and a meteoric rise in the past year. The seven-year-old company has moved from clocking 8.5 programming hours in January 2000 to 33 hours in January 2001.
For someone who started as an "assistant model coordinator", Kapoor has 18 shows on air. Such as the highly popular Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi with a rating of 8.38 which too on the mighty KBC and its 8.91 (wee ending January 7). "It has been seven years of hard wor ,'' says Kapoor. "But I've enjoyed myself. I get a kic when people react to the characters I have created. The power to make people cry, laugh and dream constantly amazes me," she adds.
So what else has changed? Well, revenues for one. The company's turnover last year was Rs 20 crore and Kapoor projects an increase of Rs 25 crore by the year 2002. That's one high a 25-year-old will find difficult to live down.
Ekta Kapoor:
Bansilal M. Jumaani and Sanjay B. Jumaani.
Ekta Kapoor's famous obsession for the ` letter' is thanks to the Jumaanis, who have been her counsellors since the start of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. Sanjay Jumaani claims they have had a 90 per cent success rate in their cases.
"It's a myth that we advise only Bollywood stars. Our best moment has been when we advised a childless couple to make a few changes in their names and last year the lady delivered a baby boy," he says proudly
There's more than super-success at wor here. Both Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor are 30-plus fiery, feisty, famous and eminently single. And although they're both off-camera celebrities they get mobbed big-time in public places. Ekta was the over-possessive daughter of the superstar of the 1970s Jeetendra. As a child she once chased one of his father's heroines with a slipper because she found the leading lady misleading her precious father by batting her eyelids too hard. Karan was so much younger than his father he grew up thinking producer Yash Johar was actually his grand-dad. "Whom can we marry?!" they both lament today. Ekta feels her power and fortune bloc all bachelors from honest courtship. Karan hasn't found the girl jissko dekh kar kuch kuch hota hai.Sighs Karan, "I don't thin I ever will find the right partner. If finally neither Ekta nor I find someone else we'll marry each other," quips Karan Johar about the other half of the - Klub. Do you see sparkles of blooming relationships?
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