The unbearable frustration of being subjected to Indian television

I wonder what’s up with television these days. In spite of a Tata Sky dish that belts out “n” number of channels on to my TV set, all that I manage to watch is Bigg Boss, cricket or an odd news bulletin once in a while. I find solace in the fact that I spend most of my day at work and am saved the agony of surfing the channels trying to find something interesting. I once was so frustrated with the fare that I tuned to Aastha TV trying to invoke the lord to answer why there was a dearth of anything remotely interesting on the television.

What's even more intriguing is the fact that we seem to have the most creative minds dishing out the best of advertising and marketing campaigns in between the same crappy stuff that is passed on as prime time television in India. On the other hand, every random television series on foreign television seems to be great entertainment. In the past year or so, I have seen numerous episodes of Lost,Prison break, Friends, How I met your mother, Yes minister, The Office and what have you and they all seem to hit the right chords. They seem to understand the concept of entertainment as something more than just dance/singing reality shows and Rakhi Sawant. Don’t even get me started on Rakhi Sawant…she seems to be the only constant in the world of television,omnipresent on our screens in some form or the other, blaring out utter bullsh** at the top of her voice and believing what she does is liked by a few of the audiences.

It makes me wonder if we grew up watching Dekh Bhai Dekh, Neev, Surabhi, Zabaan Sambhalke, and even Hip Hip Hurray on the same television sets. Whatever happened to the producers of that generation of television. Or is it just that I expect too much from them? All I seek is an hour of clean entertainment every night from the 300+ odd channels that are broadcasting in India. Given the current scenario, I would even be saisfied with re-runs of some of those old masterpieces. Believe you me, they would seem to be more relevant than any Saas-Bahu/Sasur-damaad/jija-saala/bhai-bhatija saga that is being telecast right now. What happened to the quiz shows like Mastermind India and Bournvita Quiz Contest? There is not one such programme on TV these days.They say Art imitates life…I guess Art has got a hell of a lot of catching up to do as life is way ahead and it better hurry up.

I wish the producers of this bullsh** were held accountable for the lack of creativity that is ailing their trade these days. I want to tell them that Rakhi Sawant is not an alternative to the lack of original thought that goes into creating an intriguing hour of television, one that is worth the TRPs it gets. We are a mature audience…a fact that is clearly portrayed in the change in the fabric of movies being produced now a days. A movie like Peepli Live is a clear indication that the audiences are more receptive and appreciative of something that is original in thought and clear and honest in portrayal. I make a plea to all the creative minds to start taking us seriously as an audience and to stop abusing our intellect through programmes like Rakhi Ka Insaaf and a special journalist report on where to find “Swarg ki seedhi”(stairway to heaven) and others of the tribe. In one such “special report” on India TV, the reporters declared to have found the stairway to heaven. I wonder why he didn’t climb the stairway instead of coming back to the messy world of Indian journalism.If the trend continues the way it is, it won’t be long before we would be glad to trade our LCDs and flat screens for a good set of books and newspapers that would give us some increase in our knowledge.

In conclusion, I would like to quote a few known/unknown people on the apathy of being a regular TV audience.

• I wish there was a knob on the TV so you could turn up the intelligence. They got one marked "brightness" but it don't work, does it? ~Leo Anthony Gallagher
• I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. ~Groucho Marx
• Television has changed a child from an irresistible force to an immovable object. ~Author Unknown
• Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all. ~Fred Allen
• Television: chewing gum for the eyes. ~Frank Lloyd Wright
• Theatre is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture. ~Author Unknown
• Television has raised writing to a new low. ~Samuel Goldwyn

Watch Out!!!

"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. "
- M. Scott Peck

Some gifts are meant to be cherished and kept forever. They are a way of telling the other person that you are cared for. It goes to show the thoughtfulness of the gifter and the importance of the giftee.

I believe all the gifts I have received show how well the other person has started to understand my likes/dislikes, taste, choice and preferences. The latest addition to the collection is a watch gifted by a special someone. It was precisely the piece I would have picked out from amongst a million others. It was bang-on with the specifications of the kind I liked, but never had. White dial, rectangular in shape coupled with a brown leather strap. I, for one, have never been comfortable wearing a watch with a metal strap. I somehow find it very inconvenient. Leather straps, on the other hand, appear to be very classy indeed. They exude an inherent quality of being premium, upwardly, and rich. Of course, I'm talking about the ones that do come with a classy leather strap. This takes my collection up to a total of 5 (unbeaten, if I may add).

I still have my sights set on the special Hugo Boss that first caught my eye on a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Mumbai before joining Barclays as a full time employee. I saw it on an in-flight magazine's centre-fold page. It was the most amazing watch I had ever seen. Round dial in black with a wonderful display that was textured on the inside. It had three separate dials to mention the date, the day and the 24-hour circle of the day. Its plating had a beautiful reddish tinge to it. It was shiny enough to attract attention but not with the arrogance of Gold. The round dial was neither too chunky, nor too ordinary. The reddish tinge made it a beautiful spectacle and I couldn't take my eyes off it for a long time. It had class written all over it: Bold, Italicized, underlined...

I spotted this watch much later at the Shoppers' Stop outlet in Dynamix Mall, Juhu. I summoned the courage to enquire the price, completely overawed by the masterpiece and not knowing what to expect. "Rs. 37,000 only", replied the diminutive salesman behind the counter. The "only" seemed to hurt the most. I felt some prickly object pinch the deeper spaces of my heart. It seemed to puncture my broken heart with a needle and I swear a teardrop formed inside my eye. Given my present status as a carefree, free spirited (no pun intended) bachelor with a decent earning I could afford it. But, it was an extravagance I thought best to avoid at that point in time. All the values passed through generations seemed to coalesce and shout at me, "YOU DARE NOT DO IT, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT". It would have cost me a significant proportion of my monthly take home salary in return for having the satisfaction of wearing it on my wrist. I still haven't been relieved of this romance for that masterwork of a Hugo Boss craftsman and I aspire to make it mine someday when it no longer costs a sizable fraction of my monthly earning.

My fixation/ affection/ affinity for/towards watches( and clocks, for that matter) has been an integral part of me for as long as I can remember. It began with an HMT Zap that I received as a birthday gift when I was probably in second or third standard. Maybe in the fourth, I don't quite remember. I recall wearing a light blue (Electric blue, in current parlance) watch to school proudly. It was a big achievement to wear a watch to school as most of the others weren't even very accurate with their ability to decipher the time. The watches then mostly seemed to be a collection of small ( and smaller) needles rotating about a point. Their relative positions to a fixed dial were somehow supposed to help us in measuring the fourth dimension. My experience of wearing a watch to school at an early age had got off to a jump start. "Hey You... Yes, you...the one with the blue watch", shouted the teacher;" You're not allowed to wear a watch to school till the sixth standard". She took away my beautiful blue HMT Zap and asked me to collect it from her after school was over for the day.

I guess it is a passion that was inbuilt into my CPU by the Almighty himself. Its a fascination that has only grown in magnitude since the very first day I wore a watch to school. I( a meagre earthling) am nobody to question the logic of the Almighty on why some, like me, are crazy about watches while others don't really give a rat's a** about it. All I can say is, if You have given me a passion , please also be kind enough to provide the means to be a really successful watch enthusiast. I'm ready to accept the same in Cash/ Cheque/ RTGS/NEFT or by way of gift(s) from people I know.
;-)
Till then, WATCH OUT!!!

A change too blatant...

Long as it may have been, 2009 was a year dedicated to learnings. A year that opened life to many facets that I knew always existed,but never really found out about.
It began with the loss of a legend in my life. Yeah, he was a legend alright. Quiet and aggressive,soft and stern, he was the best audience I always had. I knew he was always there with an open heart(and two open ears) whenever I needed to find a way through darkness. So much so that I had started taking him for granted. I remember the last conversation we had... It wasn't about the blood transfusions or the numerous medical tests and medicines that his age threw at him. Neither did it relate to any of the problems that he was facing at that point in time. He talked about how an open top sedan would be ideal for him to travel through Jaipur a few evenings later at a very important moment in our family's history. I say he's a legend because he could talk about that evening with such conviction and zeal, in spite of knowing he had a slim chance of making it through. There is no way he didn't know it himself. He was prudent and pragmatic enough to see through all that was told or explained to him. I know it because in all our conversations in the past few months, the topic of his fraying health always came up and he never ignored it. On this particular occasion though, he never mentioned it;and neither did I intend to remind him about where he was and what was going on around him.I only wish I could have been there to hold his hand.... How i wish i could hold that hand again...for once and I would never ask for it again. The set of events leading up to the moment were as confusing to me then as they are now. People say whatever happens, happens for the betterment of things...I can't find a single thing that has been made better by that one moment in all our lives.