Reminiscing the good old days of Doordarshan…

Ads and serials have become a part and parcel of our lives ever since the idiot box attained a permanent membership in our houses. The advent of satellite T.V. made sure the theory of evolution applied to the serials and commercials, throwing the Doordarshan era into an endangered (or almost extinct for most of us) zone . I am from the generation that evolved from that era to the present one. And, I am not opposed to the satellite channels for it has presented our generation with unlimited choice for entertainment. But there are times when I wistfully reminisce about the good old days.

Back then, the serials had a definite end to them. No never-ending, tear-jerking soap operas where the dead come back alive years later with plastic-surgeries done. No repeating, mix-matching or horribly messing up of plots. Vamps did not sport a scary and gory bindi with equally-matching jewellery and outfit. The camera did not freeze onto the faces of the 50-odd members of a typical household to capture their reaction to a death-spelling punch dialogue from the baddie. No hair-raising or heart-wrenching background music accompanied every single event in life. The important events-birth, marriage or death-were not portrayed to the minutest detail leaving the viewers completely exhausted.

The story-lines had depth, meaning and the duration lasted no longer than 13 or max 26 episodes. Buniyaad and Hum-log were considered mega-serials back then. Who can forget the rib-tickling comedies like Yeh jo hai Zindagi (starring Satish Shah and Swaroop Sampat), Ulta-pulta (Jaspal Bhatti’s brain child) and Wagle ki duniya. As children, we would wait for Sunday to tune in to our favourite cartoon series beginning with Mickey and Donald, He-man, Giant-Robot, Ramayana even. The Saturday evening Hindi films and Sunday afternoon regional films were much eagerly awaited ones as they were the only times we got to view them. The 9 p.m. serial would begin after the mandatory news and then the programme-reporter would announce the list of programmes. We would wait with bated breath to hear “agli kadi” (next episode) as opposed to “akhri kadi” (last episodes) for our favourite serials.

When we talk of serials can the advertisements be left behind? Back in the good old Doordarshan days, there were no commercial breaks between the serials. There used to be a separate slot for them before the programme began. Nevertheless, we would love to watch them. The commercials, as they are now called, were not hammered into our brains every 10 minutes into a serial or a movie not only breaking the continuity of the show but also interest of the viewers. Ads or commercials have come a long (in a good form) way. There were a good number of great commercials even then. The “Lalitaji” ad, “Prestige-cooker” ad, “jab main chota ladka tha, badi sharat karta tha- Bajaj bulb” ad or “chal meri Luna” ad, each one holds fond memories of yester years. Who can forget the famous Fevicol ad that starred Raju Hirani? Even so, commercials of today, to a large extent(barring the fairness ads that grates on one's nerves), have kept pace with the current trend of being fast-paced, ever-evolving and creative.

The face of the world is changing so rapidly that the gap between two generations is rapidly closing. Every two years, a new generation seems to take birth. When my father, an ardent fan of the black& white movies, especially the likes of Guru Dutt and Dilip Kumar, would remark,”kahan gaye wo din?” I would say, “Oh! How can you watch the painfully slow- paced movies, where one actor takes eternity to respond to the other person?” Ironically, here I am reminiscing about DD days. If you do not change with time, you become an antique piece only to be appreciated in a museum. DD met the same fate for not keeping in tune with changing times. But that does not take away its past glory. Here is to when old DD was really gold. Cheers!

More about R..

R turns 15 months old next week. I have tried to enlist all the skills he has mastered and the ones he has newly acquired.

1. Walk and run almost to a perfection. The occasional stumbles are there alright but he does not make a show of it. That’s my brave son for you.

2. Speak a few words. His vocabulary list goes thus:
amma, apppa (a little stress on the “p”). He mostly says it to the appropriate person but at times, gets it mixed up..:-)
ca (for car or anything that goes on wheels)
ba (for ball),
bowwow (for anything that goes on four legs),
bye, hi,
bike (though it sounds like bye)
jhua (for jhula, the baby swing that adorns our living room),
Kozhi (hen in tamil) of course he cannot pronounce the “zh” part just yet. So it’s just koii or mostly koya for now. Somehow he insists on saying koya. Well’s that the beauty of toddler language, isn’t it?
Auto (R loves saying
Aachu (“over” in tamil) and but of course
Mammu (the universal baby talk for food)

3. Point out to the parts of the body. (Ears, nose, toes, tummy, head and mouth). Somehow I cannot make him point to where his eyes are. He cannot or does not want to.

4. Blow a flying kiss, shake hands and give a high-five, clap hands (these he could do even as a 10 month old; blowing flying kiss is the recent addition).

5. Kick the ball like a football.

R seems to understand more than that is apparent. He would give a well-meaning smile when we are discussing him between us (hubby and I). He gives me a naughty smile when he does something he knows I do not approve of. He loves books. We have got him a few hard-bound educational books and he never tires of asking us to read it out to him. Hmm…we do get tired at times. But since it is a good practice that I hope is sustained even as he grows older, I keep at it. The other thing he is fascinated, no obsessed, about is cars. Any faint noise that comes close to that of a vehicle passing by below (horn, reverse horn all alike) gets an enthusiastic “caaaaa” from R. Ditto when the “Tata Aria” car advertisement is aired; even if he is not in front of the T.V. (he knows it from the background score). He loves the BBC world background music. Even the most engrossing task (read mischief) comes to a halt when he hears this music piece.

The other day, he pleasantly surprised me by bowing down to a Saibaba photo-frame that is not kept in the usual “pooja ghar”. Also, when I once did not approve of something he did and gave him a long stare, he smiled indulgently, shook his fingers and said “no-no”.



My story with R:







Valentine or not?







The age old old-age story






The choice to be..

There is a common phenomenon to put a label/tag to everything one (especially women I think) does. Working or non-working, full-time mother, SAHM, …? full-time mother? This one stumps me; as though one can be a part-time mother. You are either a mother or not. Period. As I said, these tags seem to haunt women more than men. we have to somehow squeeze ourselves into one of the recognized labels. Any ambiguity, and a new tag is coined. For instance, being a mother is not sufficient enough for people, so, viola! a new term- SAHM is coined to emphasize that you also stay at home.

People have certain expectations, strangely not from themselves but from others. Women's liberation fanatics have sadly taken this battle to the other extreme-you HAVE to be working to qualify yourself to be called liberated-else you are the cow slaving for the man. If you do not hold a job, you are probably dull enough or lack the confidence to manage home and work. The concept of choice just escapes the cranium of these nutcases. Liberation for me would mean the freedom of CHOICE that a woman should have in life.

So, what do you do at home? Even if I am just hatching eggs and day-dreaming all day, how should it matter to anyone? After all the pay-packet that I might have earned otherwise will anyway not flow into the other’s house. It is so annoying when an innocuous question such as “so, what do you do?” has to be answered carefully so as to justify your being at home and not working outside of home. The “working” tag is so narrow that it just cannot be extended to the home. For some reasons, the grass is never green on this side.

A is a friend who worked far away from home even before marriage; so in that sense very independently managed herself, got married to the person of her choice, lived apart from her hubby for some years due to career compulsions and then worked into having a co-existing career and marital life. Peers may probably envy her life and wished it were them. The parent-generation is a proud clan.

I have no issues with this. I would have felt the same.

However, consider this scenario: A studies hard to get into engineering, studies and gets placed in a prestigious company. She quits realizing it is not her cup of tea and decides to pursue arts instead. Further, she does not have a regular job but freelances as a hobby. Will anyone say they are proud of her? Will anyone want to trade places? Someone who is not successful in the conventional manner is not a bright person. Someone who probably wants and works towards having a well-kept house, a happy-married life, be a SAHM by choice is a non-ambitious person-a loser who probably lacks the skills to have a career.

Why does a job/career HAVE to be a choice for modern day women? Why can’t she just have a choice to do what she wants and still be respected for that?

Cooking it up

Cooking is not my cup of tea.

Yet, I do it and I dare say I do it quite sincerely even though it does not exactly excite me. There are times when I do try out some new dishes for the sake of variety and when the cooking bug does bite me-yes it does happen. The first year of our marriage was most significant in this regard when I was enthused into trying out new and newer dishes, trying to impress dear hubby (wink wink, don’t all the new brides do it to an unsuspecting husband). After years of staying away from home and eating non-palatable stuff, hubby was most happy and grateful if I can say so. Appreciation being a great motivation I was not stressed to create a meal. Even if not up to the mark, which was the case many times, hubby would be gracious enough to cover it up. Ah! The innocent me took it seriously enough to assume that I could cook quite well. I would naively even ask him to rate me from a scale of 1 to 10 and he would say I average between 7 to 8 which was a great score for me-an amateur cook.

Now, to be fair to myself, I do not cook atrociously and over time I have learnt to cook quite decently and do dish out some delicious stuff every once a while (consistency here is a challenge though ;-)). However, with time, hubby’s expectations have also increased and the rating system has, as a result, also become stringent:-(. As a mother to a toddler now, I do not enjoy the leisure of time and hence this important chore has become a case of hit and misses.

Now, the real issue here is that I have not (yet) conditioned myself to be able to digest a bad review, however genuine, for the simple fact that I feel the connoisseur should take into account the effort, time and intention behind the whole process of dishing out a (decent) meal. Also, I find it really unfair on the part of life to pile upon so many tasks on the shoulders of women while men get away with very little. She is expected to multi-task with a smile on her face and is not spared any inefficiency on her part too! Any confrontation on this matter with hubby is met with a benign smile and “oh, you women do it so well. Blah bah”

So with the bar being raised by hubby compounded with my basic disposition towards cooking and the eternal paucity of time in the world of mothers, should I say, I have not come closer to embracing this abhor-able yet intrinsic activity/chore of life?

I score a shameful 5 or 6 now on hubby’s scale. Well, more years into this marriage and I only hope I do not slip into sub-zero.

Wife-y and motherly blues


