Being Nostalgic

Yesterday I was in a very sentimental mode and I phased through my recent past.

As I was passing from Dadar through Bandra and finally towards my home, I saw the office of Electronics Corporation of India (ECIL) and suddenly remembered my first Multi-Channel Black and White Television and how sweet were those days. I fondly remember Mumbai Doordarshan and its excellent programs like Chhaya Geet, Saturday and Sunday Movies, Phool Khile Hai Gulshan Gulshan, those news broadcasts and the excellent quality of presentations, programmes that brought to screen eminent singers right from Mohammed Rafi to Mukhesh and stalwarts like Adi Marazban and "Avo Mari Sathe". Not to forget those live cricket matches without the advertisements between the overs. Such wonderful days!.

Nowadays we have hundreds of television channels but there is nothing worthwhile to see, the editing and photography have become absurd, zooming in and zomming out, flash lights coming to the screen. Is this what is called good photography? This any child can do so where is the professionalism here! I must add that editing has also taken a beating. While an artist or a singer or a dancer is about to deliver a key punchline, the camera zooms out on the background dancers or pans out to the audience making a complete mockery of event. One tends to loose interest in the programmes.

The News Channels do not transmit news but they instill fear and I don't know how did the concept deviate from news to presenting trivia. Everything becomes breaking news - Some how it will become like the old adage - the wolf has come and suddenly when there is genuine breaking news, people might not even care for it.

Last night I was watching Midnight Feast on Travel and Living Channel and the host visited on township inhabited by an Amish Community on the Route 66 in US which believes in living without many of the modern technologies - they live without electricity, without piped water, without washing machines, personal computers, internet, iPods, music system and all things modern. It is quite a closed community and believe that by such abstinence they will reach heaven directly. Must be quite an experience to live life that way.