Those Were The Days

But back when I did,I watched incessantly. I used to write a weekly column on TV,so it was primarily work,but it was fun,too. Back then Doordarshan was the only game in town,so you were free to slam it and shut it. But not forget it,and move on to another channel. Because there werent any. The satellites were yet to arrive: TeeVee equalled DeeDee.

Doordarshan is now up mainly for retro jokes. From the perspective of someone who has access to a couple of hundred channels,an all-powerful remote,and 3D visors,Doordarshan seems like a faint echo in a cavern. But there was a time when the same public broadcaster was scorching new paths to our retinas,and creating timeless programming.

It is easy to indulge in those-were-the-days nostalgia. But try comparing Shyam Benegals Bharat Ek Khoj to anything you have on TV these days. You wont be able to,because a series of that magnitude and span hasnt been created since: I caught a slice of it on Rajya Sabha TV last week,and I was struck by how alive it still felt,despite the unvarnished sets and fuss-free costumes.

And this is not only to sing paeans of Doordarshan which used its news bulletins to give us endless sarkaar-darshan,with ribbon cuttings and flag unfurlings and events which had newsreaders use the same inaugurated with pomp and show lines over and over again. The coming of the satellites liberated us from the crippling monopoly of the state-run broadcaster and its prescriptive programming: the youthful,brash body language of Zee and Star and Sony changed everything.

Suddenly,we didnt have to stick to re-runs of old DD faves,Buniyaad and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi and Hum Log. Suddenly,we were slam bang in the middle of young people who acted and spoke like young people and adulterous adults: Tara,Banegi Apni Baat,Hasratein changed the way TV soaps and serials were made in India. The national broadcaster came up with its own slick and smart and contemporary fiction in the shape of Shanti and Swabhimaan: Women who went to bed with men other than their husbands,and didnt repent! Girls who talked back to their parents! Politicians that were showed in bad light!

Glitzy gameshows and confessional chat shows came on. But the most radical changes were happening in the sphere of news. Independent video magazines like Eyewitness and Newstrack were the harbingers of glasnost,and almost overnight,half-hours on Doordarshans second channel called Metro were given over to professionals who looked at news as news,and not handouts from government departments. When Sonia Gandhi first smiled in a public appearance in the late 80s,DD was the only one to record it,but when the Babri Masjid fell,there were other eyes on it,recording for posterity,even if we didnt get to see it live: within five years,the scenario had altered unimaginably.

Those were heady days. Finally there was choice. In this brave new world,television was the go-to device. But,and it didnt take too long to became too much of a muchness. After some years of struggling with faster-than-I-could-count channels appearing on the horizon,I came to a point where I couldnt deal with the numbing similarity. By the early 2000s,TV fiction had lost all distinction and become saas-bahu-ised; TV news was always breaking,or just in,or running more and more squiggly bands below the increasingly-busy screen.

There was going to be,I saw,no let up to the Parvati and Tulsi clones. The hysteria of news channels,with an honourable exception or two,was only going to rise,whose mandate is very clearly to market rather than purvey news,and who are convinced that Bollywoodian bits and bobs equals entertainment. I decided to abdicate that chair in front of the TV set.

These days,I get all my entertainment and news from other sources,having leapfrogged over television for the most part. The only time Im lured back is when theres a great documentary or some winsome animal on Discovery and National Geographic. There is still nothing to beat the immediacy of TV when it is at the forefront of real breaking news,but it so quickly ratchets up the incoming into shrill outgoing that I flee within seconds.

Give me,this day,my newspapers and my films and my webbed world online. And Im all fine.