Long have you eluded me. No more.
After a gap of 5 years , I finally have TV at my home. I haven't had access to a TV since I left home 5 years ago for college, save for the brief stints at home on holidays or the time my roommate went out and bought a TV for our room that lasted all of 2 months. The pure joy and convenience that a TV provides is unbeatable. We have over 200 channels , 15 movie channels among them. Instead of just discovery and NGC we have over 8 lifestyle channels. Oh, How I missed you Discovery. I am amazed at the wide variety at offer, but that in itself has posed a problem. There were times in India when there would be nothing good to watch. I termed it "Dead Time"- " a period of air time be it audio or video where the viewer/listener is offered nothing that can hold his interest for long". We have a strange variation of that here in the states. I haven't yet come up with a lame name for the phenomenon, but its a period of airtime where there is an abundance of programs that attract the viewer such that he/she is pulled everywhere and in the end settles nowhere.
Still I am elated with the return of TV. It brings back fond memories if nothing else. Unkown to my parents there existed a system of understanding between I and my brother. We had divided everything in the house between us. EVERYTHING. Rooms, household objects, mixies,TV, furntiture,and even our parents. So the TV ended up being mine, but my brother got the TV stand. Furthermore the TV was in the living room, which my brother had got in turn for both the bathrooms. So even though the remote lay in my hands, and I controlled what the family would watch - to which he complied - ,when something came that he just had to watch ,he would leverage control by moving the TV stand and pulling the plug of the TV saying I had no right to his "electricity". A truce would finally reach where he would get to watch what he wanted, but the remote would be in my hands, and I got wandering rights during commercial breaks.
"I am 12 years old, TV is my life" - Kevin McCallister, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
I heard this on TV and was so happy that I was 12 years old too and in fact TV was my life too.
I was proud of my knowledge of TV timing when I was in school. I knew what was on at what time.I liked that certanity. Of telling time by what was on the TV. Like the furniture of my house, I knew where everything was. I knew how late night TV smelled. I knew how afternoon Tv tasted. I was the Lord of TV.
After a gap of 5 years , I finally have TV at my home. I haven't had access to a TV since I left home 5 years ago for college, save for the brief stints at home on holidays or the time my roommate went out and bought a TV for our room that lasted all of 2 months. The pure joy and convenience that a TV provides is unbeatable. We have over 200 channels , 15 movie channels among them. Instead of just discovery and NGC we have over 8 lifestyle channels. Oh, How I missed you Discovery. I am amazed at the wide variety at offer, but that in itself has posed a problem. There were times in India when there would be nothing good to watch. I termed it "Dead Time"- " a period of air time be it audio or video where the viewer/listener is offered nothing that can hold his interest for long". We have a strange variation of that here in the states. I haven't yet come up with a lame name for the phenomenon, but its a period of airtime where there is an abundance of programs that attract the viewer such that he/she is pulled everywhere and in the end settles nowhere.
Still I am elated with the return of TV. It brings back fond memories if nothing else. Unkown to my parents there existed a system of understanding between I and my brother. We had divided everything in the house between us. EVERYTHING. Rooms, household objects, mixies,TV, furntiture,and even our parents. So the TV ended up being mine, but my brother got the TV stand. Furthermore the TV was in the living room, which my brother had got in turn for both the bathrooms. So even though the remote lay in my hands, and I controlled what the family would watch - to which he complied - ,when something came that he just had to watch ,he would leverage control by moving the TV stand and pulling the plug of the TV saying I had no right to his "electricity". A truce would finally reach where he would get to watch what he wanted, but the remote would be in my hands, and I got wandering rights during commercial breaks.
"I am 12 years old, TV is my life" - Kevin McCallister, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
I heard this on TV and was so happy that I was 12 years old too and in fact TV was my life too.
I was proud of my knowledge of TV timing when I was in school. I knew what was on at what time.I liked that certanity. Of telling time by what was on the TV. Like the furniture of my house, I knew where everything was. I knew how late night TV smelled. I knew how afternoon Tv tasted. I was the Lord of TV.
2 comments:
Funny, after 1 year of no TV, when I went back to India all I had was sheer irritation/contempt for TV. Even here, on the rare occasions I manage to get myself to sit and watch.. it can't last more than an hour or so. TV just has way too many ads, way too many pointless segues that destroy time as I know it :)
Ohh, I did not get to write about my love of TV ads. The whole experience is incomplete without them.
Post a Comment