She wears a seven-carat diamond ring and three-carat earrings. She dons power suits and a maroon pout when she's running her movie magazine and switches to chiffons and pink lips when she wants to convince her boyfriend of her weddability. When she's bad, she raises her right eyebrow. And when she wants to be really, really horrid, she just offers a bottle of poison to her rival. Her mantra: "Joh Sheetal Singhania ek baar chahti hai woh paa ke rehti hai (What Sheetal Singhania wants, she gets).''

NIGAR KHAN Sheetal in Zee TV's Lipstick NASTIEST ACT: Editor of a movie magazine, she offers a bottle of poison to her chief rival

Is it any wonder then that Nigar Khan who plays Sheetal on Zee TV's daily soap, Lipstick, loves what she's doing? "The finest compliment I've been given is when a man in Dubai told me that every time I came on the screen, he wanted to strangle me," croons the 23-year-old ramp model.

Joining her in having the time of their lives is a sleek pack of svelte sultanas, many screen hours away from the shrieking banshees who equate being evil with sporting one-foot-long eyelashes that look as if they would take wings. Make no mistake, television's reigning mean queens Ramola Sikand (Kaahin Kissii Roz) and Pallavi (Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii) who will stop at nothing to acquire family control are still there, breathing fire, delivering defiance and packing in the (much-lower-than-before) ratings. Slowly, however, that school of super bitches is giving way to a new breed of women who grin and dare it.

RAJESHWARI SACHDEV (right) Ambica in Star Plus' Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii NASTIEST ACT: She tries to seduce Om, the ideal son in the family

What's more, these smile-and-shoot characters are being played by actors considered epitomes of sweet reasonableness. Take Rajeshwari Sachdev, hitherto the homegrown Goan girl who won a then hunky Milind Soman's heart in Margharita. As Ambica, she created so many misunderstandings in the happy family on Star Plus' Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii that when she was finally caught last week, she was thrown out on her ear. But not before her coordinated chiffons and boatneck blouses created a minor fashion trend. And not before she enjoyed her two-and-a-half month stint: "Everyone plays the vamp loud. I wanted her to be sweet and elegant, be cruel and yet be the girl next door.''

Television clearly loves the new nasty who seduces husbands, steals boyfriends, exchanges babies and manipulates mothers-in-law. For the woman viewer, there's a vicarious pleasure in not being at the receiving end of someone's villainy (a fate not often likely in real life). Women love to see other women cry. At the same time, the notion that a woman can have it all and still be herself is an idea that is both entertaining and aspirational.

SHWETA KESWANI Anu in Star Plus' Des Mein Nikla... NASTIEST ACT: She replaces her sister-in-law's baby with a dead child

It has been since the time Neena Gupta set the screen alight as Ketaki in the long-running Doordarshan soap Khaandan. It was a role that Shrishti Behl Arya, the producer of Lipstick, grew up with. And it is a role she tried to recreate in the modern career woman on Lipstick-before she turned really mean because the audience relates aggression to unvarnished I'll-stop-at-nothing ambition. "I don't want Sheetal to be a loser. Negative characters work well on TV. Being good is predictable, being evil is fun,'' says Behl Arya. Which may explain why when Aruna Irani felt her Star Plus serial Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand wasn't getting good TRPs, she decided to ramp up the utterly vile, salwar-kameez clad character of Anu played by Shweta Keswani. Its entry into the top 15 shows on TV was but in tune with the logic of television soaps: bad girls equals good TRPs. Says producer-director Irani: "Viewers are waiting for Anu to be punished. But they can't live without her. When we don't have her on screen, they ask: where's that horrible woman gone?''

KRUTTIKA DESAI (left) Devanshi in Sony's Kkusumthing: NASTIEST ACT: She cheats her son of all his property

It's a risk Kruttika Desai knew she was taking when she took on the part of the vicious mother-in-law in Kkusum, a popular serial on Sony. The ideal bahu of Buniyaad is now Devanshi, the wrecker of her own son's home. A few weeks ago, she had to act out a scene where she went to her son's new home and told Kusum, his wife, that their little paradise would not last long. "Nausheen, who plays Kusum, told me I was so believably evil that her hair was standing on end. I was delighted,'' says Desai, laughing throatily. She has every reason to be happy: not only does she now preside over all the property in the television family, in real life she'll be going to Israel for a six-week shoot for an English movie, The World, and will still not be written off the serial permanently.

Playing a negative character usually ensures longevity. Nigar Khan has just been asked to play a vamp in Kabhi Aaye Na Zindagi, a Star Plus serial in need of some tender loving cruelty to boost its ratings. Kunika's character in Kittie Party, the Shobhaa De-written soap on Zee TV, has had much the same effect: stirred things up and made Kavita Kapoor, the only semi-meanie among a galaxy of Complan mothers and Woman and Home housewives, look like Mother Teresa. "Negative characters are always liked because they are the focus of the viewers' hatred,'' says Kittie Party producer Manish Goswami, veteran of soaps such as Daraar and Parampara. Which is why they usually get the best lines and the best clothes-Keswani even gets to wear spaghetti straps, the pinnacle of TV style.

For a television nation long addicted to the peanut-butter-won't-melt-in-the-mouth nastiness of Brook in The Bold and the Beautiful, homegrown harridans were long overdue.