A quarter of a century ago, a woman named Tulsi Virani walked into Indian living rooms and never really left. Her world, filled with sprawling joint families, hallway confrontations, moral reckonings, and sari-clad resilience, became part of the national conversation. Now, in 2025, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, produced by Ekta Kapoor under the banner of Balaji Telefilms, is returning on Star Plus (29 July). And while the news is everywhere, the real question lingers quietly underneath the buzz: why does this show still matter?
By now, we know the numbers. Over 1,800 episodes. Eight years on air. Millions of viewers across generations. But Kyunki was never just successful; it was formative. It taught TV producers what was possible, taught families what television could be, and taught audiences to care deeply about people who existed only between commercial breaks. It gave India its first taste of what a daily soap could do at scale, and it did it with unmatched conviction.
Yet Kyunki’s return doesn’t seem to be driven by a need to chase past glory. If anything, it feels like a quiet response to a louder cultural shift. In a world saturated with high-gloss web series and snappy reels, the show seems to offer something slower and more grounded, something that remembers when storytelling didn’t have to be clever to be powerful.
Daily soaps once shaped the emotional fabric of Indian households. They influenced how people thought about marriage, motherhood, duty, and family. At their best, they offered comfort without escapism. At their worst, they reinforced tired stereotypes. Either way, they mattered. Kyunki was the gold standard in that space, a show that could spin an entire episode out of a look, a silence, or a change in tone.
Smriti Irani returns as Tulsi, the character that defined her and, in many ways, defined an era. But not everyone will be returning. A number of original cast members are absent from the reboot, and that’s bound to shift the dynamic. Then again, perhaps that’s the point. The new Kyunki doesn’t need to replicate what it was; it needs to reinterpret what it meant.
There’s also the larger question of whether today’s audience, restless, time-starved, and scattered across platforms, is willing to commit to something as old-school as a daily soap. Nostalgia might open the door, but storytelling will need to keep people inside. The format may be familiar, but the landscape has changed. The reboot will have to navigate that gap with care.
And yet, there’s something deeply reassuring about this return. It reminds us that some stories don’t fade. They pause. They wait. And when the world starts spinning too fast, they offer a kind of stillness we didn’t know we missed. Maybe that’s why people are still talking about Kyunki, two decades later. Not because it was flawless, but because it was foundational.
The timing feels deliberate. Indian television is in flux. Streaming has expanded our vocabulary but hasn’t quite replaced what daily serials once offered, a shared rhythm, a nightly return to characters we knew better than our neighbours.
So as Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi steps back into the frame, it carries the weight of its own legacy, yes, but also the hope that something slower, softer, and more sincere still has a place in prime time.
The only question now is: Can lightning strike twice? We feel, yes it will.
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