Hey people, thanks for reading! please leave ur comments and criticism!
I don’t avail of the modern luxury of the television. No, it’s not because of I’m a science-crazed student who prefers to have her head buried in a fat volume of physics, to laughing at a sitcom – it’s because, due to some odd twist of fate, the television is never completely available to me.
Coming from a deeply cultured and traditionalistic Indian family my mother has great reservations for those American people that one would come across on Star World or AXN, while they have for her a deep regard: I may sit before the television praying for the lead actors and actresses to give into their throes of passion, but they never oblige me. Instead, they begin as soon as my mother steps into the room, to monitor what I’m seeing.
Ofcourse she is affronted by the hideous white people, and convinced that this is all that her daughter thinks about and enjoys seeing. Following which I am treated to one of her deeply philosophical homilies on how these vile expatriates will corrupt the tender mind of her ‘little’ and innocent off-spring and interfere with her psyche.
On other occasions, I find my younger sibling of a decade’s experience and knowledge seated beside me, which he duly offers in his suggestion of the programme selection which, in his accordance should be either the deeply moving Oggy and the Cockroaches where one gets to view the hardships of an unfortunate cat who shares his house with three plotting, diabolic cockroaches; or the very educational and soulful Doremon where one is treated to Chinese names, voices that bats would be better off listening to, and a blue alien with an antenna on his head who solves his friends’ problems with caps, mirrors and other such enchanting objects.
While I have no incertitude in my fellow progeny’s wise decisions; I being – as I have already established – interested in only that; offer the feeble suggestion of a Grey’s Anatomy, or a Packed to the Rafters or a One Tree Hill: that my brother finds tedious and boring. He agrees however to Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother; but unfortunately, those twenty-two minute sit-coms can only be watched, if I am on the qui vive with the remote, switching suddenly and frequently to the Daily Headlines whenever something his tender mind should not see, flashes on my LCD.
Fortunately, I did find a show that both he and I appreciated: that atleast till date has had extremely few – as my brother puts it –yuck moments. It also has one of the most debonair gentlemen as its lead and satisfies my need of swooning, a juicy plot and adequate suspense. Unfortunately Star World airs this avant-garde marvel on Sundays at nine pm: which leads to sufficient quibbling because either my mother decides that she must sink her teeth in kebabs with immediate urgency, or my father resolves that it’s family night and must be spent in eachother’s company, or God Punishes me – for not completing my homework that week, I presume – by sending down the rain and thus disrupting completely the signal.
Ofcourse there is no use watching the fourth episode of a series if you miss the second and third, and eventually I abandon my insubordination and behold my favourite Telly-series being carries away by a cortege of shattered aspirations and dreams.
On certain afternoons, when my family make themselves scarce, I’m treated to the company of my darling old female servitor, who favours me with an impish and implying smile when any woman on the screen as much as hugs another of the opposite sex. Misbalanced and rather embarrassed by her ‘looks’ I switch of and proceed to spend my afternoon in my own despondent company.
Rest of the time: Salman Khan makes an appearance, and my mother – devout admirer of the bulky superstar – promptly usurps the telly, or Iron man or Spiderman decide to make an appearance and being the older sibling I forsake the possession of the remote not-very-obligingly; or grudgingly surrender the privileged to my father so he can watch eleven men run behind a hard red rubber ball.
Thus I have given up the cause, for mutiny gets me grounded, understanding gets me bored to tears, and lusting after the television just simple breaks my heart. So I have accepted my situation and accepted that in Uno belle’s Life there is Tele-no-vision.
