NEW DELHI, SEPTEMBER 26: My day has been as blank as the TV screen. You could say the screen reflects my emotional state: A moody blue. Every two hours, I switch on the television set and press the remote button in the faint and irrational hope of finding something to watch. Aha, on channel two, there's a snowy fuzziness. Amitabh Bachchan's beard? Alas, no (more's the pity), just a TV channel showing some signs of life on this, the first day without cable TV.A television critic is by definition a TV junkie. I'm addicted to the tube. And there's no rehabilitation centre for the likes of me when the fix is missing. I simply have to sweat it out in front of the silent, motionless box. Three days without television seems like a lifetime.Must be many of you out there, just like me. Closet couch potatoes. The morning was not so bad. There are the practical demands of quotidian life which help you get through. Still, the minute I read the news of the cable operators strike, I rushed across and checked my TV set. May be my cable operator had put my interests before his own. Forlorn hope. The only thing I found across 99 channels was a written apology: ``Inconvenience Caused Deeply Regretted.'' Regrets Only?I cursed the government, I demanded the minister, Arun Jaitely's resignation, I vowed to take my cable operator to the Supreme Court, no less. Television is my fundamental right. Hadn't the court ruled that the airwaves belong to the public? ``You can't trust any one these days,'' I bemoaned aloud. But nobody was listening, except my pet Spitz, Alex, and he never understands a word I say anyway. By afternoon, my militancy had drooped along with my spirits and shoulders. I surreptitously switched on the set again thinking that the government, which has rolled back so many other decisions, might have taken pity on me and removed their amendments to the Cable Act which were the cause of all this trouble. Nothing doing. Tell you what though: I won't be voting this governmment back to power in a hurry, no ji, no. By 4pm I was really beginning to get worried. And though my hands were not precisely shaking, they trembled.Okay. That's it. I give in.I reached out for the old TV antennae. I caressed it with a duster, I laid it out, I murmured sweet nothings. ``Please, please just this once, and I'll never ignore you again,'' I begged. I switched the remote to preset mode and said a little prayer. Suddenly, the blue screen disappeared. I was about to pull the antennae and my hair out, when I saw the most beautiful sight in the world: Moving pictures on DD Sports/DD2! Admittedly, the picture was bad. Nostalgia swept over me like a wave of love: Good old Doordarshan. Somethings just never change.As every addict knows, the more you consume the more you need. The threshold keeps rising. DD2 was proving to be inadequate. Yeh Dil Maange More. I wondered how I would get through the evening(s) (three if there is no compromise). I was in a blue funk. I thought of all the things I had forsaken for television: Books, theatre, music, parties, conversation, sleep - even a love life. Here was my chance (and yours) to renew my acquaintance with all of them. As Bridget Jones would have said, if Bridget Jones had been faced with television drought: Hurrah!But you know what? At the end of Day One of life without television, I felt alittle cheered. I tried to think of all the parents whose children were having exams and would be glad of the cable blackout. But it was no consolation.I thought of all the serials I have vilified, damned with faint praise, switched off. Come back, all of you: All is forgiven.
