A Tale Told by an Idiot

What adorns the walls of most homes these days….it’s the 51-inch or the 48-inch or may be the much smaller 32-inch or 26-inch (hope nobody is getting other ideas!) wall pieces called the Idiot Boxes. Over the years they have become sleeker, smarter, flatter with fancy names like Bravia and Aquos.   Wow!

It was the year 1973. I was a little girl of about eight who had been transported from a tiny town near the Bihar-Bengal border called Chittaranjan to the big, bad metropolis called Bombay. That was when I first saw the tiny box called TV…..not in our own house but in another apartment across the road. My father showed it to me from the window even though from that distance I could not make much of it. All I could gather was that it was a rectangular box and on its screen some pictures could be seen.

My next proper encounter with this box was at my uncle’s place in Calcutta where I stayed for about three years completing my schooling. This was the late seventies when Thursdays meant ‘Chitrahaar’ and weekends meant ‘Movietime’. Death of a former President or Prime minister meant endless days of classical music. Election meant two-three movies a day!!  Sports meant 5 days of non-stop cricket. News meant Doordarshan - Gitanjali  Aiyer and Minu Talwar , Usha Albuquerque and Tejeshwar Singh. Smart haircuts, printed chiffons and silks, strings of pearls….. but,of course, we saw them all in black and white. Very sedate…very sophisticated… unlike the garish purple and shocking yellow suits which adorn the modern news readers…there are now so many of them we cannot even remember their names!!!  

Kids these days are used to these fixtures on the walls which they can switch on with a remote in the bedroom or in the living room lying down or sitting up, studying or eating. But watching television in those days was a grand family affair, almost like a ritual. Doordarshan began only in the evening. Doordarshan’s signature tune could be heard emanating from every home sharp at five. Remember its ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ logo? Evening tea had to be completed on time. On Thursdays by eight o’clock servants made sure their work in the kitchen was complete, ‘rotis’ made, oldies served their dinners whether they were hungry or not. School going kids like me, made sure that all homework and assignments were done, bags packed by the cut-off time. On weekends this shifted from eight to six-thirty. Nobody needed to remind us…..all were on their toes. The exceptions were my college going brother and cousins- because the balcony seats were reserved for them. They didn’t have to rush to grab better seats. And also they didn’t have homework to complete or ‘rotis’ to make or vegetables to peel.

At the appropriate time we would all make our way to the living room on the first floor. Guess what, even the less fortunate neighbours would start trooping in… mothers-in-law and   daughters-in-law with their kids in tow. The “durrie” would be spread on the floor and all of us…the lesser mortals like us, the ladies of the house, the neighbours and the servants would take our seats looking at the little rectangular box. At the stroke of 8.30pm my male cousins and brother would come and take their balcony seats on the sofa. One of them would switch on that little box –“the wonder of wonders, the miracle of miracles”. The Bengali news was coming to an end….Pankaj Saha was signing out. Time for Chitrahaar…a string of Hindi film songs….half an hour’s treat put up for us by the only channel that operated….Doordarshan. Many of us would still recall the Nirma and Vicco Turmeric ads that interspersed the Dev Anand-Waheeda and Rishi Kapoor-Neetu Singh romantic hits.

Weekends were a grander affair. Show time shifted to six-thirty. Saturdays were for Bengali films but Sundays were what we, the children of a lesser God, looked forward to ---Hindi movies. Since show time went on till nine thirty or ten, if my Aunt was very generous, tea and ‘jhaal muri’ would be served in the living room or “the hall” as it was called and the servants (who were young boys in their teens) would rush out in the ad and news breaks to fetch them. The balcony seat holders were all Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak fans and any other movie was not up to their intellectual levels! I wonder why the Fellinis and Truffauts of our family sat through the Shammi Kapoor- Sharmila Tagore and Uttam-Suchitra movies! May be just to follow the Bengali and English news! Show time was often followed by erudite debates on  whether Raj Kapoor’s “Teesri Kasam” or Bimal Roy’s “Do Bigha Zamin” could come anywhere close to a Satyajit Ray or a Ingmar Bergman movie!!

Sometimes things would even hot up a bit. There was this servant who, while watching a Jeetendra or Amitabh Bachchan movie, would get so excited that he would start moving closer from his rear stall seat on the “durrie” to the balcony seats and in his excitement start banging on the glass top of the centre table! Once he would have probably cracked it if a sharp word from one of the balcony seat holders had not woken him from his trance. In his excitement, while watching a Uttam-Suchitra starrer, he once managed to break the leg of a wooden chair!!

The television first entered our house in the late seventies. It was an anniversary gift for my mother. By the early eighties the television had grown legs of its own and did not need a table to be placed on. No crochet or embroidered cover was required to adorn it. It came fitted inside a wooden cabinet with shutters which would open and close. I still remember the make-Sonodyne. It stood at an angle in one corner of the living room facing the sofa. My father brought home the second set just before the Cricket World Cup in which India won-1983.

Gradually we switched from the black and white to the coloured…Onida’s “ neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride”. How we loved those big hoardings of the green serpent-monster springing its little horns of jealousy!!We graduated from news, songs and films to psephologists Prannoy Roy and Ashok Lahiri,  from ‘Chitrahaar’  and ‘Chalachitras’ to soap operas like ‘Humlog’, and ‘Buniyaad’. Our first English serials were the unforgettable ‘Yes Minister’, ‘Different Strokes’ and ‘The Jewel in the Crown’.

Much has changed…..The idiot box is no longer a box….it has become Sleek, Slim and Smart.  Doordarshan news has given way to 24x7 news channels……The television has come of age…age of channel surfing. Geetanjalis and Salmas have made way for Barkha Dutts and Rajdeep Sardesais. We have appointed Gods like Arnab Goswamis who raise questions on their own and demand answers in the name of the Nation. Has the idiot box opened up a new Pandora’s box? 

Wonder where the buck will stop!!

DS