Wednesday, April 13, 2005

All The LittleThings

Sometimes you just sit and have nothing to do. For me it's one of the most common scenarios. I'm as a rule a bit vacant in life. Staring into nothingness and listening to what people around you are saying is one of the best tricks I pull off. Everyone thinks I hear them but then they "know" that I'm not listening. I'm in one of those moods. But there are no people around and I feel a bit nostalgic.
I'm not too old, but was around early enough to see a fair bit of DD's television programming, listen to programmes on the radio, read a fair amount good articles written by some really good Indian writers and had my bunch of childhood heroes (Phantom, He-Man et al). Oh yeah, I've also played on the 4-bit Atari gaming console. So for all those who came in late (or came out late) here's a refresher/crash course.

A] The first thing that I remember are the daily Phantom and Mandrake comic strips in the Times of India. You never had a better series. Calvin and Asterix are all fine but when you're kid it's gotta be The Ghost Who Walks. Saturdays and Sundays were really bad as you got none of these serialised strips.

B] Misha- The Russian magazine. We subscribed to this because my that's my sister's name. But that was a fortnightly I waited for. Gimme more. Wasn't much of a Tinkle guy.

C] The Saturday Review by the Times. It had really good stuff sometimes. Then something happened and they stopped.

D] Chitrahaar on Wednesdays and Chaayageet on Thursdays. I preferred Chitrahaar, they played newer songs and a couple more than Chaayageet.

E] Fun Time in the afternoon during the summers. Two hours of pure bliss. The afternoon band also a fair amount of interesting serials Karamchand, Aaa Bail Mujhe Maar.

F] Giant Robot and Fireball XL5 was my introduction to international Television programming

G] Saturday evening movies which I was never allowed to watch. Everyone else was busy watching Jeetendra beat up Shakti Kapoor, so I got bored on Sat evenings.

H] Cibaca Geetmala by Ameen Sayani on the radio. By the end of it I was sick of hearing "Gori Hai Kalyiyaan", the movie was Aaj Ka Arjun (Amitabh and Jaya Prada). That song was Numero Uno for almost a year.

I] The original sexy song by Right Said Fred, this wasn't to old but then it set a trend.

J] Street Hawk, this was Knight Rider ka baap.

K] Games like Frogger and Tank Boxing on my Atari console we so low on the graphics front but sooooo much fun.

There are more a lot more such as the Lucille Ball show, the morning radio shows and then Laurel & Hardy on DD. Hawa mahal was a drama show at 20:30 every evening on AIR. Things have moved ahead so quick that sometimes i feel older than I am, just because the transition from so many contraints to free tech has been so quick. I guess this will have a sequel soon.

2 comments:

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