Good old DD - Weren't we "Santhusht"?

As I was gearing up to see the finals of the Commonwealth Bank cricket series, I got to know that the match was also being telecast on "Doordarshan". That name certainly rang bells and being exposed to Cable TV for well over a decade had made me ignore the presence of our very own national channel.

As more and more channels keep cropping up each year, I wonder at times, as to how we (including me and my friends) managed to entertain ourselves with just one TV channel. Yes, the first reply would immediately be "But we had no other choice". But there is something more to this. We had our own preferred set of programs that provided us the much-needed fun needed to quench our insatiable thirst for visual entertainment. Let us just take a trip down memory lane to rekindle the sweet memories of the DD of our bygone childhood era.

Though our choice of cartoons were limited to He-Man, Disney, Ducktales and Jungle Book , I remember many of us eagerly waiting to see them on those leisurely Sunday mornings. In fact He-Man was so famous that its merchandise became an instant hit among kids of our age group. I remember pestering my father to buy one from the Paico store at Trivandrum (with him tactfully evading my request each time). He-Man was assisted by his friends Man-At-Arms, Teela, Sorceress and Orko whereas his enemies were the dangerous Skeletor and Trap Jaw. Ducktales also was a good toonie program focussing on Uncle Scrooge Mc Duck (a billionaire) and his 3 nephews (Huey, Duey and Luey?). Jungle Book was telecast in Hindi and I remember being desperate to watch each episode, as was the case with my friend 'Binu' :-). Disney used to relay episodes of Mickey and Goofy in the beginning but then it got discontinued. Also popular were 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Talespin'.

As to the weekly serials, none can beat the fame of Ramanand Sagar's "Ramayan" or B.R.Chopra's "Mahabharat". The sight of Rama's duel with Ravana or Arjuna's battle against Karna, with different kinds of arrows flying in all directions, were a treat to watch at a time when special effects were just beginning to take giant strides in Hollywood movies.

Remember the young Shah Rukh in serials like 'Dil Dariya', 'Fauji' and 'Circus'?. Fauji and Circus were entertaining with the former describing the tale of an army cadet whose commanding officer is his brother. It had its moments of the tough army life, blood relationships, romance, fun and the usual British style Army dialogues like 'I say chaps...". All that looks a bit silly now, but the fact is that, at that time, we simply loved those! ' Circus' depicted the life of circus artistes, with each episode highlighting the life of an artiste in the troop. Shah Rukh was "Shekaran" the son of the circus owner whom everyone refers to as "Babuji". The serial came to its climax with the passing away of Babuji and then Shekaran taking over the mantle of ownership after rejecting an offer to go and work in America.

Who can forget those wonderful Hindi detective serials? It started with Karamchand starring Pankaj Kapoor in the title role as the eccentric investigator with his secretary Kitty who always seemed to try to impress him. The famous catch-line/dialogue used to be “Shut up Kitty”. And then there was “Tehkikaat” with the chief detective being named Sam and his assistant going by the name Gopi. Ashok Kumar came in one of the episodes in which he is named the murderer in the end. My favourite among the detective serials was Byomkesh Bakshi starring Rajat Kapoor in the title role. The other protagonist was Byomkesh’s friend Ajith, a writer, and one who begins to live with him after they meet on the first case and also one who accompanies and at times assists him on most cases. Based on the stories by the Bengali writer Saradindu Bandopadyay, the episodes were a hit among the TV viewers with Rajat Kapoor playing his part to near perfection. For cultural program enthusiasts there was “Spirit of Unity Concert” and the popular “Surabhi” hosted by Siddarth Kak and Renuka. The question asked at the end of Surabhi used to invoke response from people all over India sending their answers through postcards. At a time when people had not heard of Discovery Channel and when National Geographic Channel books were read by a few, that wonderful German channel TRANSTEL used to telecast wonderful programs on wildlife. They also used to telecast the slapstick comedy series “Didi’s Comedy Show” and the detective series ‘Derrick’. Also popular were the detective serials Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Sherlock Holmes and ‘The Old Fox’.

Among the popular long running Hindi serials like Humlog and Buniyaad. The former was about a typical middle-class Indian family of the 1980's, whereas, the latter was a story on the lines of the Partition era. The list of long winding serials also later included the popular Shanti (starring Mandira Bedi), Kismat and Swabhimaan. Another popular serial used to be Mr. Yogi, a comedy based one about the various foiled attempts of Yogesh Patel to find a girl he can marry. Other comedy based programs used to be Jaspal Bhatti's Ulta Pulta and Flop Show, both being extremely popular during those days.

Turning Point was an excellent program aimed at preserving the scientific temper among the people. Initially hosted by Mahesh Bhatt, it was later anchored by Girish Karnad and Nasserudin Shah and explained simple scientific principles in a manner which would be termed simple even for a layman. I was a regular viewer of this program that had people sending their scientific queries to Prof. Yashpal who attempted to answer some of them at the end of the program.

No description of DD would be complete without the famous sitcom "Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi" which starred the Late Shafi Inaamdar. The serial was so popular that Moser Baer has now released the episodes in CD's. Among the sitcoms, another popular one used to be "Tandoori Nights" starring Sayed Jaffrey which was a take on an NRI family in London who owned a restaurant.

DD introduced the charismatic economist cum journalist "Prannoy Roy" through the program "World This Week". "The Pritish Nandy Show" used to be the popular talk show with Pritish interviewing many famous personalities from the field of politics, entertainment, media etc. My favourite episode in that was the interview with the famous magician P.C.Sarkar :-)

Among the Sports programs "World of Sports" was an evening program hosted by Narottam Puri. Also hugely popular and my personal favourite was "Sports Time" hosted by Tom Alter (first time I heard of him). It had a section in the end called "Lighter side of sports" which showed some of the funny moments in various sports. It was the program which showed two young girls practicing tennis rigorously in the United States and were tooted to be the next big names in women tennis. They were Venus and Serena Williams.

Our own DD (Malayalam) had its set of interesting and popular programs. Jiby had mentioned Kalikkalam, the sports program, in one of his blogs. I used to watch this program regularly and thoroughly enjoyed it those days. I remember that we got a holiday whenever Kerala won the Santosh trophy, and therefore, used to pray for their win not just as a supporter but even for getting an extra holiday in the school calendar. But I remember Kerala Police losing the finals once in a penalty shootout and agonisingly lose the cup, and more so, depriving me of a holiday

:-(

People in Kerala used to stay glued to their television sets on Sunday evenings for the Malayalam films being telecast. Though at most times, DD telecasted films from the "Jambhavan era" a.k.a films starring Nazeer and Sheila (How many films have they acted together in??), at times sense prevailed and somewhat new and good films used to be shown. I remember once that they had telecast a film that seemed to have some 17 songs (and most of the film was just songs!) when they had announced earlier that it was going to be a new movie. I , being so bored, actually saw that movie! Next day, I went to school thinking that all my friends would laugh at me on having seen that movie. Luckily all of them too had seen the movie! Instantly I was happy that I was not alone in this world.

But what ailed DD were the usual problems faced by a Government entity. Bureaucracy, red-tape and a general lack of accountability in the Department. Today it just exists, viewed regularly only in the remotest of places, and, in the coming years, even that elite viewer-ship seems improbable. But at its helm, it truly gave us some memorable moments.

P.S: One day, at my friend's house, we were using the remote to switch over various T.V channels to see, hoping against all odds, that there would be something worthwhile to watch. We started with DD and surfed many channels before we came back to DD. Whether it's irony, I don't know, but right when we went back to DD, the anchor of that program being relayed at DD said "Welcome Back". :-)

Anyone interested in downloading the video links of the epidsodes of "Byomkesh Bakshi" ?

Find it in the blog link given below:

http://serialepisodes.blogspot.com/2007/05/byomkesh-bakshi-episodes.html

Enjoy!