Who’s the most successful producer on the TV horizon? Ekta Kapoor, right? She has made characters like Tulsi and Parvati come to life on the small screen. With her foresight and hard work, Ekta has managed to provide livelihood to thousands of people who work for the Balaji Telefilms. So who wouldn’t want to be a part of the ever growing Balaji family?

If you also wish to have Ekta shower her blessings on you, you need some preparation gal! Sure, you can win a coveted role in any of the myriad shows Ekta produces. All you need is to be lucky and have a head for learning quickly. Here’s a short preparatory guide for those of our memsaabs who wish to become icons on TV:

• The first thing you need is to be comfortable wearing heavy saris round the clock. If you get a role in a daily soap, you’ll surely be shooting round the clock. And all you’ll get to wear is the saris, unless your character is not yet married. But how long can even that last? Finally the character has to get married and wear the saris, right?

• Next, you need to paint yourself up thoroughly, wear kilos of jewellery and then try to catch some sleep. That’s what most of Ekta’s characters do. So you’ve got to be ready for the grease paint and the metal clinking in your ears as you sleep in your saris.

• How can an Ekta character not know how to weep at the drop of a hat? So practice the eye-drops/weeping routine a couple of times before you audition. Will help you a lot in this line.

• So you’ve practiced the look and the weeping! Now let us get some dialogues rehearsed. Surely, you’ve got to be familiar with Ekta’s shows to get a spot on any of them. Note down a couple of dialogues from any show and practice. It’s quite likely that you’ll be given the same dialogues in your own show, with just the names changed.

• If you think dancing is just for the actors on big screen, you’ve got it all wrong. Every soap actor needs to know how to dance. Dancing not only gives you proper stance, posture and grace, but also helps in other ways. You can enter any of the celeb dance shows when out of work! Similarly, you can also make a lot of money by doing an act on the Telly Awards night. And hey, don’t forget the moolah that soap actors make by dancing in the Dandiya Pandals during Navratras etc.

• Now that you’ve learnt most of things, you need to learn a few things about the PR and media. You need to make a few friends in the media who can help you in spreading rumors about yourself. Nothing boosts a show like a good controversy or a link up or a fist fight between the actors on that show.

• If you are wondering when we will talk about acting and expressions, keep wondering!!! You DON’T need to be an accomplished actor to be cast in thee shows. All you need is to look good and do all the things listed above. If you get all this right, you are all set! The acting will follow later on…..