A halt at the past

While purposelessly surfing television channels on a rare free Sunday morning, I tuned in to Doordarshan on a random whim. I guess it was more out of curiosity than anything else that I thought of revisiting the only television channel of my childhood. Had it changed with years? Possibly, I thought. Definitely I didn't expect Surabhi or Chandrakanta to be shown. 

But they were broadcasting a show called 'Chanakya' at around that time of the Sunday morning. Quite surprisingly, Chanakya had Chandrakanta-like qualities (I don't mean the characters here; I mean the show). It showed characters in that exact semi-darkness that I was wont to watching as a child. The actors spoke in semi-Sanskrit, as if a purer form of Hindi necessarily posed a closer depiction of those times. Be that as it may. 

The next show was an interview of Khayyam, music director of an equivalent past glory as Doordarshan itself. By this time, my entire family, comprising my parents and my aunt, had joined me in being glued. They spoke about past movies in the show, and yesteryears, and how there was no music these days, about how everything that happened these days was 'nangaa naach'. 

However, I just thought then, when was the last time when my entire family saw anything on the television for that long together? We were not only watching the show, but also talking among ourselves - another rarity these days in commercial nuclear families. I remembered the discussions I had with my colleagues - about how we had our own favorites. I had Alif Laila on Friday night at 9:30, someone else had Superhit Muqabla on Saturday evening. 

Unlike the 90s, one now had a gamut of consumerist choices of channels to choose from - soaps showing women in silk sarees slapping one another, news channels broadcasting breaking news, Hindi-dubbed Telugu movies, and so on. Yet, we did not agree on a common interest, unlike the forced situation of yore when we would happily watch the only option we had. 

We kept watching the show and I kept evaluating in my head about the situations of movie-making gone wrong. Having made documentaries on similar budgets out of college funds, I knew the low end camera and sound techniques involved due to paucity of budget, the heavily amateurish editing, and so on. In essence, the thought process behind a Doordarshan documentary. Time had moved on, and one saw evolved processes of interview-shooting now. People didn't watch Doordarshan anymore; no Sir, not even in small towns. The interview that was conducted in an atypically Doordarshan manner finally ended, and we got back to our 2014 lives. But not before watching Renuka Shahane and Siddhartha Kak as anchors on the next show.

I suddenly felt as if I had accidentally stumbled upon a past step, stopped for a while, given a smile, and proceeded with my onward journey.