Doordarshan Memories

November 16 2010

I first saw the television when I was in class one. It was the winter of 1985. I remember two men walking into our house with a big cardboard box. Just like every other five year old, I was curious to know what was inside the box. My imaginations yielded many a thoughts which included sweets, toys, kitchen utensils, wardrobe stuff. Finally when they opened the box and took the brand new TV, I remember jumping up and down, for that was the first time I was seeing a TV from a very close proximity. I turned around and looked at my cousins saravanan and hema akka (hema akka is six years and saravanan is two years older than me . Yes! OLDER than me) and hema akka gave me that know it all look. But it was too late for me to react as I had already shown my enthusiasm. saravanan went near the TV with raised eyebrows (Infact he was also seeing the TV for the first time in his life).

The two guys connected the TV to some wires and did something with an aluminium rod ( My dad later told that it is called as antenna) and finally my mom was called in to switch ON the TV. In the meantime me and my cousins had occupied strategic positions in front of the TV. When the grains appeared,I started clapping. hema akka was keeping her silence as always. She gave a sarcastical smile and that made me to stop clapping. We happily watched the grains for the next two hours and went to Sleep. That was the first program I watched on TV. By the by the name of the TV was BPL(made in India).

We watched TV that whole week and everyday we atleast spent around two hours in front of the TV. The grain show continued. We started counting the grains that appeared on TV. I counted till 864 and gave a smile to hema akka. Again she bowled me over by saying that she counted till 2342. I was amazed at her counting skills. Then one day sundar chitappa(my dad's bro we use to call him FIRE cause he always ve scornful look) did something on the TV and he called that process as "Tuning the TV".He told us that we can watch another program from now on. We were very happy.So the next whole week we had an additional program on our daily schedule.The new program looked like a rainbow. It was a colorful program when compared with the grain show.

I went around and told my friends about the wonderful informative programmes that I was privileged to watch. One day When me and hema akka were watching our favorite program, something weird happened. Some Red color circle started forming in the TV and finally, it ended up like the one in the picture below. Joy and happiness knew no bounds for me and my cousins. hema akka knew how to read and write Hindi. So she read the script in the circular thing and informed me that the new program's name was "Doordarshan". Again she gave me that attitude look and immediately I surrendered. She seemed to me as the epitome of knowledge even she was failed in +1 2 times. Every day we would wait for the red circular thing to appear and we used to sing along with the background tune that accompanied the doordarshan show.

In the days that followed we were treated to load trucks of programs and we had our list of favorite programs too.
On Mondays, we used to watch Oshin.
Tuesday nights were the terror filled nights as I used to get scared of the horror Invisible man.
Wednesday nights remind me of Chitrahaar( An assortium of Hindi film songs).
Thursdays take me back to the memories of Gitanjali Iyer and Shobana Ravi ( I loved both the news readers from the bottom of my true heart and my mom too).
Friday nights rested me with Oliyum oliyum(tamil songs), World this week.
Saturdays and Sundays were fun indeed with movies, Streethawk, Poirot, Heman, Ramayana, World of sports.

Days went by and the my television was polluted with hundreds of new channels and thousands of programs. Every one in our family have different program tastes and we no longer watch one channel continuously for more than fifteen minutes. I still have the BPL TV with me. One powerful lightening blinded it. Soon I ll try to make it work. The same interest with which I used to watch all my favorite programs on doordarshan has ceased to exist. My BPL TV is still in my precious memories.