Pavitra Rishta

Plot

Pavitra Rishta is the love story of a couple, Manav Deshmukh (Sushant Singh Rajput), who is a garage mechanic and earns money for his lower-middle-class family and Archana Karanjkar(Ankita Lokhande), the partially educated, eldest daughter in her family of five and focuses on their difficulties in getting married and living in Mumbai. 

Manav falls in love with Archana which culminates into his marriage with her, but the marriage is broken off when Sulochana discovers that he lied about his credentials in order to marry Archana, as a result of this, they start living separately, and are heading for a divorce shortly, meanwhile the Deshmukh family receives a shock from their son Sachin's death and Manav is forced to marry his pregnant fiancee Shravani (Pooja Pihal), a year passes by, Archana has completed her training and as a co-incidence returns as Manav's boss in his new office, this time she is paired with her colleague Jaywant, Both Archana and Manav, supposed to be married off to different partners at this time are still longing for each other's love and thus, elope. 

Manav and Archana are rebuked for this and left on the road to fend for themselves. After struggling with poverty and the grief of Archana's miscarriage, Manav's fate smiles at him and he becomes a rich successful businessman, but Savita Tai's new found jelousy towards Archana makes her a barrier between him and Archana, she hatches a plot and separates them, she asks Sachin to make Archana sign the divorce papers. Manav (Hiten Tejwani) thinks that Archana has left him, and so he leaves for Canada with his family and twin daughters Ovi and Tejaswini and Archana lives in India with her mother and adopted daughter Purvi.

After a leap of 18 years, Archana and Manav are about to be divorced and are forced to live together as part of the Court procedure. They eventually unite and also find their long lost son, Soham, who had been kidnapped by Varsha, Soham's apparent death had been the final nail on the coffin on Manav-Archana's relationship. 

It seemed that Varsha and Soham had been dead for 18 years but actually she and Soham had escaped death. Later on, Varsha makes Soham believe that his parents Manav and Archana don't care about him and that she's the one that cares about him. Later on Varsha gives Soham back to his parents. The story also leads to a love triangle between both Manav's daughters, Purvi and Ovi, who love Arjun Kirloskar, Manav's business partner's son, who loves Purvi, and eventually marries her, but then Ovi says she wants to marry him, so she does and Purvi gets heartbroken.

The show takes yet another generation leap of 20 years, repeating the separation track by showing Arjun and Purvi as a to-be divorced couple and a love triangle between Soham's (aka Raghav Mhatre) daughter Ankita, against Arjun's daughter Pari (aka Ahaana) and business tycoon Naren Karmarkar (aka Aman).

After a long time, Ankita and Naren reunite as do Arjun and Purvi. Pari eventually apologies for all she's done and the family comes together. The show ends with Archana and Manav's death as they are united in Heaven.

Reception

The show was popular before and even after the first generation leap. It lost its appeal after its second generation leap in October 2013 after which Ankita Lokhande played double roles, that of Grandmother Archana and her granddaughter Ankita. She was cast opposite Karan Mehra. The show's time slot was changed from 21:00 to 18:30 in April 2014 and the 21:00 slot was taken by Kumkum Bhagya, also produced by Ekta Kapoor.

Accolades

Pavitra Rishta received several awards and nominations. Lokhande and Rajput received multiple awards for their roles Archana and Manav in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories, as has Nadkarni in the Best Negative Actress category and Ekta Kapoor in the Best Serial category.

Broadcast