Yesteryears' Sunday, truly a DD day...

The television has dieted a lot over the years, and become a lot slimmer. Anorexic, rather. Subjected to a zero-fat diet, it looks frighteningly slimmer than the Bollywood heroine who dieted so much that even her dietician lost weight! A TV does not require space now, in that it has almost lost its third dimension.
Now that the context is set, this article is a tribute to yesterday's obese television, the one idiot box which could keep us greater idiots within its grip.

Reminescences from childhood, both remembered and reminded (and constant orders from other bloggers, that I continue blogging - thanks due to the person/s who compelled me to continue writing), forced me to write this article.

The television was most exploited on a Sunday, for there was "Dada ka, Dadi ka, Papa ka, Mummy ka favourites, aur Duck Tales mera!!!!" For those who recollected the Ajanta Toothbrush ad, commendable, read on. Others, please realize that the above line was adapted from the toothbrush's ad, and read on, too!

My Sunday used to start at 7:00 am, with toothbrush-in-mouth, and Rangoli-on-Doordarshan. Sunday was the one day mom could afford to wage a war with cobwebs at home. And, since this was a repetitive chore, she preferred to do it with Rangoli in the background. I would manage to seat myself among the remains, amidst the spiders' dwellings being demolished like buildings were in Delhi. Almost always, mom had a double chore of cleaning our house first, and then cleaning me of all the debris that I so laboriously gathered upon myself. A wash, a rinse and a couple of spins later, I used to emerge clean, all prepared for the two most awaited (and the only) cartoons on DD, Duck Tales and Tale Spin.

DETOUR: Readers, I put the next few sentences in Uppercase, for I want to emphasize the 'peace and quiet' of yesteryears. Jargon added, it is just a glimpse of the extent of the then trivial tranquility we have managed to sacrifice, for as bugging a concept as infra-red radiations carrying packets of 'voice and data' through the air, under the ground, and beyond the skies!!! Rewind, readers![<<]

1) NO 'TV REMOTE' FOR SOMEONE TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL.
2) NO OTHER CHANNELS TO CHANGE OVER TO.
3) NO LANDLINE FOR SOMEONE TO INTERRUPT THE VIEWING.
4) NO MOBILE PHONES! (THIS IS A BLESSING THAT WE HAVE LOST. THE 'SMS' IS ONE CONCEPT THAT IS FAR MORE LETHAL THAN IT LOOKS, AND MAY BE AVOIDED. YEAH, I AM SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE. SILENCE! NO MORE QUESTIONS, PLEASE! ;) )
5) A STREET SILENT ALL DAY, MORE SILENT ON A SUNDAY.
6) CLOUDY WEATHER, CHANCES OF A RAIN.
7) HOT CHAPATHIS IN THE MAKING, IN THE KITCHEN (Sunday was the 'chapathi day' at home.)
8) LOVELY BHAJI TO ACCOMPANY IT. MY UNCLE DIDN'T LIKE POTATOES, I DID, AND OTHERS PREFERRED TOMATO CURRY. THE WOMEN IN THE HOUSE ACTUALLY MADE THREE BHAJIS FOR ALL OF SIX PEOPLE, ACCORDING TO THEIR PREFERENCES! HATS OFF TO MOM AND GRANNY!
9) AN UNINTERRUPTED SUPPLY OF TEA AND SNACKS THROUGH THE DAY!!
10) COUSINS, WHO STAYED AT HOME FOR UPTO AN ENTIRE MONTH, DURING VACATIONS.

I dream to go back into such an era, where getting bugged took a backseat, and you needed to be one of those niche people to get irritated, by purchasing appropriate equipment like the telephone.

Flying back to Duck Tales, it was the one cartoon I longed to be a part of. I even wondered whether my one forceful entry into the picture tube would enable me become part of all the action!

9:00 am was Nirja Guleri ki peshkash - CHANDRAKANTHA. Believe me, I used to like Kroor Singh for his leadership qualities. OOPS!!! Did I say LEADERSHIP?! Little knowledge: part of an MBA course. Forgive me, dudes and dudettes (if any)!

Come 10:00 am, and I was shooed away with a menacing stick, the one tool which could enable me run to the North Pole, fast enough to actually beat Amundsen's flight!

12:00pm, and out came little Sarma from his study room, frustrated at the number of apples they had printed in his Maths book to depict the number 27!!

Meanwhile, the older generation sat glued, for their share of the News, and News was what DD gave, without worrying about whether an actress managed to chargesheet her ex-boyfriend for having... oh, leave it!

And if ever there was a sense of national integration, it was when DD showed regional films on Sunday afternoons, with subtitles, which enabled people to comprehend the essence of the film, irrespective of the region they hailed from. For a bit of trivia, they followed the alphabetical order in telecasting regional films. The order ran from Assamese to Tamil.

This was followed by a delink to the regional DD channels, to give regional programs their due.

An hour of news, in both Hindi and English, followed.

As a member of the Orkut DD Community pointed out, the 'good night' uttered at the end of the English News actually meant the end of the day for us kids (barring a Sunday, for there was Surabhi)! We were instructed to sleep, or dumped into bed if need be, but 10:00pm was the limit.

9:30pm: The one-of-its-kind travel program called Surabhi - the name says it all.

As I zip forward to the moment called NOW, it's already 10:30pm, but feels like evening, with a couple of glasses of tea in waiting, and sleep far from sight. This is a quote I have oft quoted, to many a person, in speech and in writing. BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT. DD had time-slices for every "kind" of program telecast and so, had its brevity intact. The brevity is no more now, for we have an excess of every "kind" of program, manifesting itself as a "television channel". Barring a few quality programmes spaced far apart and strewn among various channels, we have but junk to fill the space.

The fragmented remains of DD's marvels can be found in YouTube. The small screen just turned smaller...