A Stroll Down Memory Lane: Congrats DoorDarshan and Goodbye Onida Devil....

Yesterday Doordarshan turned 50. Like most Indians growing up in the 1980s, I remember eagerly waiting for the progammes to start at 6 in the evening on weekdays. Never mind if it was only Krishi Darshan; we, the first generation of Indian couch potatoes, were well and truly glued to the television set.

Now, of course, I’d almost forgotten its existence, yet was glad to see the first women of Indian television, the news readers, back on TV yesterday. I strongly feel that the screaming scribes of today like Rajdeep Sardesai and his wife Sagarika Ghose have a lot to learn from the likes of Salma Sultana, Rini Khanna-Simon, Minu, Sunit Tandon and others who delivered news in their sober and measured style night after night.

Salma and Rini were on Barkha Dutt’s The Buck Stops Here yesterday night, and when on Barkha’s request, Salma signed off the show, somehow, it felt like going home.

It’s hard not to be nostalgic today, thinking of all the wonderful and endearing serials of the DD years like Nukkad, Mungeri Lal Ki Haseen Sapne, Byomkesh Bakshi, and so on. Today’s TV culture with its many channels and hundreds of shows – ‘reality’ or otherwise – pales before such icons as Rajani, a firebrand character played by Priya Tendulkar. The Ekta Kapoors of the world will never be able to create anything that even comes close to Rajani.

I also heard that it’s goodbye for the Onida Devil, who symbolized television for us back then. ‘Neighbour’s envy, owner’s pride,’ may not hold much water now, with a vast change in today’s status symbols, but it was bang on then.

So, bye bye, devil dear.You’ll definitely be missed.

Congratulations Doordarshan for hanging in there all these years …. hope you can spruce up and re-create the magic.