Like many others in my generation,my first exposure to televisions came during the 1982 Asiad. I remember making a four-hour journey to Thiruvananthapuram only the capital of Kerala had a terrestrial service then — with my grandmother to watch the event on TV.
Televisions those days were grand objects,mostly stashed away inside their wooden cabinets,safe from children and curious adults. It was also a very moody gadget. The smallest draught would send the antenna often up to 20 foot long,if you stayed far away from the transponder on a spin and the signals haywire.
The more privileged families had a VCR to go with the TV,often bought from smuggled goods dealer at a high premium. They hardly ever bothered about what was on Doordarshan and preferred to stick to their special programming of Tom & Jerry,Knight Rider and Bill Cosby,even if the same episodes had to be repeated every alternate day.
Portable TV sets were available even then,but they were a scam as there were no signals to be received on the tiny aerials and there was no point having a portable set and keeping it wired to a TV stand. A few years on and the portable sets moved inside cars,though always rigged to a VCR. But this wasnt a success either,for a small bump on the road and the entire cast would be jumping around on the sets.
By the mid 1990s,with the advent of the cable channels,we no longer had the TV antenna hanging over our heads,or towering over our roofs. Gradually we forgot the nuances of twirling the antenna to get better picture the angle where it will be clear of the banyan tree in the next compound,the height at which it will have no interference from the three-storey building down the block.
Now we are in the era of DTH and HD television. Large LCD screens adorn walls in middle class households and antennas or television sets with wooden cabinets are not even available in junkyards. The latest in technology is mobile phones that can play live television from terrestrial signals. I got to try one of them,the GFive G269i,and was surprised as the ease with which it was scanning channels. Pull out the small aerial on top and,voila,you have crystal clear picture and sound on three channels. But there was a bigger surprise. All you can play on this state-of-the-art gadget is good old Doordarshan.
Life has indeed come a full circle.
