Culture >> Browse Articles >> Immigrant Experience
So Many Buttons, So Little to Watch
Featured Author:
Anurag Chatrath
Anurag, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, is a corporate banker by profession though he claims allegiance to words and not numbers. He gave up his career to pursue a Masters in Creative Writing. He never went back to banking and now freelances so as to combine his two passions of writing and traveling. Past assignments have been with publications such as India Today Travel Plus, Financial Express, and Hindustan Times. His other pursuits include music, languages (French and Italian, more coming) and Yoga. His friends are tired of his I-am-travelling-to-South-America-next-month statements. A couple of books are in the writing.
Check out Anurag’s website at www.anuragchatrath.com
November 20, 2007
The tone didn’t betray any emotion when she purred, “Give me the remote. You are anyways not watching anything useful.” Given that Tendulkar was on 93, it was not exactly the most convincing of her excuses but I pretended (unwisely, some might argue) not to take the underlying hint and continued to stare at the screen.
Her next sentence (read pronouncement) sealed it – “House is on and I have to see it.” The subtly italicized ‘have’ was a sure-shot reminder that I was on marshy land. Wisdom lay in quietly handing her the little black device I had so far been clinging to.
- Discussion: An Shah Rukh is a Terrible Actor
- Not qualified for the career you want? Find a degree program here.
- Need help paying for school? Find a scholarship here.
As I endured an unshaved Hugh Laurie, I lamented the fact that most don’t know that some of his best work has not been in the company of Ms. Edelstein but with Stephen Fry. But then these are the kind of people who think Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives is why John Logie Baird labored to transmit moving images rather than focusing his attention on the consumption of Haggis and Irn-Bru.
Many would like to clobber me to death (with a remote, mind you) for what I am about to say.
TV here is crap.
Why? Let’s deconstruct.
When we were growing up, we used to listen, open-eyed, to cousins from across the seven seas who would boast about the multiplicity of TV channels ‘back home’. Not only did we not know that the word channel had a plural, but even that singular channel wasn’t broadcast 24-7. The state, which owned Doordarshan, never realized that people might want to watch their fare before 6 in the evening or after 11 at night.
Yet we all enjoyed whatever little we got. Pure unadulterated quality – Sabira Merchant testing our knowledge (the real pre-google one), Chitrahaar for a princely half an hour twice a week, Salma Sultan’s roses, a film a week, and the dimply smile of Tabassum in Phool khile hain gulshan gulshan. Of course there were some unwatchables – like the agricultural DIY on Krishi Darshan (with due respect to the 85% who must have found it useful) or the Rasputinesque Dhirendra Bhrahmachari teaching us how to suck in water from nostril and out from the other.
These hiccups apart, the ‘quality’ of DD’s fare was augmented by programming from our erstwhile colonial masters – Who can forget Basil Fawlty goose-stepping and ‘not’ mentioning the war, or Frank Spencer’s trademark ‘ooooooh’ after clogging the toilet or causing yet another short-circuit. And then there was Sir Humphery Appleby who enriched my vocabulary with words for which I still haven’t found occasions to use.
Suddenly Doordarshan started beaming movies on Saturdays also making it an unheard of two movies a week. Given that VCRs and DVDs were words we were not even aware of, this manna took us time to get accustomed to.
With that sort of TV virginity, I was initially shocked and awed when I landed here – too many three letter words – ABC, NBC, CBS, HBO, and TNT. But after years of wondering whether Ross and Rachel will get together, and in between Eva Longoria’s pout and Kenny’s afterlife, I am beginning to wonder if it all makes sense.
Maybe I am being too finicky but I need something out of my TV viewing experience. But what? Definitely not information – there is no disputing that TV is an inefficient medium for updating one’s knowledge, documentaries or period movies notwithstanding. There is some charm in using one’s imagination to put a face to Achilles rather than superimpose the features of the – actress- who -plays -Rachel’s ex-husband. So I don’t think one should rely on the TV to get information – It is far more productive to get it from Larry and Sergey’s labors (those scratching their bald pates, please google and find out!).
That brings me to the next excuse TV – philes give for their addiction. It is a channel of entertainment (if I could use that really bad pun). I disagree there also – unless one considers entertainment to be the process of pressing a button incessantly followed by a click of the tongue and a disappointed nod. Ad infinitum. In about 4 hours of sitting in front of the TV one usually gets only about 15 minutes of ‘entertainment’. The rest is all irritation at why one is not getting entertained.
I partially buy the stress-buster argument but IMHO ironing or cooking is far more effective at unfraying my nerves. And given the amount of time I spend every night cleaning the daal stuck on the pressure pan, cooking really makes me forget my boss’s idiocity or my colleagues ability to strike deals at a rate far greater than his intelligence warrants.
So why was I sitting in front of the TV? Her hand was in mine, as she swooned over Mr. Laurie, and I wondered if the little master got to three figures. As the ads came on, I bent forward to reach for the remote, when she reminded me, “Honey, its your turn to clean the pressure cooker tonight.”
