A popular soap opera about complicated love affairs between Indians and Brazilians has debuted on a premier entertainment channel of Kazakhstan.
Channel 31 launched the Brazilian-Indian soap opera "Passage to India" on May 20. Titled "Caminho das Indias" in the original Portuguese, the opera or novella has been able to successfully bring India into the living rooms of a large majority of Brazilian homes for nearly a year.
The story is about beautiful Brazilian girls falling head over shoulders in love with Indians and vice-versa leading to complicated love triangles and hilarious situations in the two countries.
All the roles are performed by well-known and popular Brazilian stars and actors. The whole story is recounted in Portuguese though with a liberal sprinkling of colloquial Hindi phrases to make them sound authentic and real.
The Embassy of India in Kazakhstan has worked with Channel 31 to bring this TV serial to the Central Asian country. It is being telecast on prime time every working day in the evening in Russian and rebroadcast the next morning in
Kazakh language, an embassy statement said.
Speaking at the inaugural launch ceremony in the city of Almaty, Indian Ambassador Ashok Sajjanhar said although some portrayals in the novella might be cliched, stereotyped or somewhat inaccurate, they will go a significant way in
raising curiosity and interest of the people of Kazakhstan to know more about developments and evolution of the Indian society.
The budget of the telenovella exceeded USD 50 million.
It has been filmed in Rio de Janeiro, in Dubai as well as in Jaipur and Mumbai. It won the Emmy Award for the best telenovella in 2009.