Dear Television,
I know it has been quite a while since I have sat with you for an extended period of time and enjoyed your company. Blame my lack of interest in you, blame the internet for making all the good sitcoms easily available for download, but the truth of the matter is that I haven’t spent too much time with you in the recent past.
I still remember how I first became your friend. The spinning logo Doordarshan with its whiny music introduced you to me. I remember how you and me spent lots of time together, both of us as 3 yr olds (me in the physical sense, you in the sense of being introduced to India). Those first few days of our friendship were spent in me enjoying possibly the most photogenic politicians of his time, Rajiv Gandhi. And then I also remember spending many a sleepless night catching the 1983 Cricket World Cup which India won, and a few other sporting events like the 1984 Olympics (with Carl Lewis, Daley Thompson, sticking in my memories till today), etc.
The next few years when you upgraded to color were exciting for me. Apart from the weekly Ramayan and Mahabharath episodes, you also opened my mind to Western Music Vides courtesy the two hour slot given to MTV every evening. It was fun actually watching Madonna and Michael Jackson while humming their songs which was etched well in my mind. Those were also the days when you introduced me to.
The mid-1990s heralded the arrival of satellite television and those were the best days of our friendship. You showed me the wonderful world of sitcoms in the form of Doogie Howser, Wonder Years, X Files, and most importantly, the WWE (used to be called WWF back then). You helped me view the world in an entirely different way as you showed me snippets of life from the US, Europe and various other parts of the world via these wonderful channels. These truly were the most memorable days of our friendship. You made me a more enlightened person and all that knowledge well and truly helped me become an awesome quizzer in an age where the internet was still a dream and books, newspapers and you were the only real sources of information about the wide world.
In 2000, I started with m professional career which automatically meant that I started spending less time with you. That being said, you were the only friend who unconditionally still provided me with entertainment when I wanted it. You along with the VCR and the VCD player still remained good friends with me for some more time to come.
Come 2004 when I left home for higher studies and reached a hostel was when our friendship reached its lowest point. Considering that I had to share you with at least 20 others in a common room where hardly anyone respected the others’ space, I simply couldn’t afford to share our friendship with others, and preferred to keep it under wraps. This was also the time when my new friend, the laptop took over the mantle of my best friend. Him along with high speed broadband have been friends with me for a little over 8 odd yrs now.
The sad truth is this, today the laptop and high speed broadband are well on their way to making you irrelevant. Yes, you are way ‘smarter’ today in the sense that if I connect you to a Wi-Fi signal, you can beam the entire internet to me, if I connect you to a laptop with a HDMI cable, you still provide the best damn movie viewing experience, but having said all that, you still remain a friend only because you harbor those other small snippets of entertainment that people call ads with you. That being said, I am pretty sure that you are on your last few breaths.
That’s the reason that I thought I will write this letter to you to rejig all the wonderful memories of our old friendship, to relive some of the awesome moments together once again.
I miss you old friend. Have a wonderful last few years of existence. Although a small part of me hopes that you make a huge comeback and bounce back into my life. But only time will tell.
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This post was prompted by Write Tribe.
