Wednesday, November 21, 2007

I miss the static!!

I still pretty clearly remember the day Doordarshan started airing their programs in Malayalam. They had started a new transmission station in Trivandrum. Our house being in a kind of a valley with hills and mountains all around, our antenna, (the yagi-uda one) was perched on top of a really really long pole. And someone had climbed on top of the terrace and had started rotating it slowly, and then someone in between would convey from someone inside the house whether it was all coming properly, or whether the signal was weak. It was almost all static then; just barely were able to make out the president inaugarating the station lighting a lamp.
But the static was interesting. The white and black grains all around. And back then it was 'grains', not static. And there was a sense of simplicity to it, and a kind of hope there that if you turn it in some other direction you really might get a better picture.
But then the tv makers replaced this with those blue screens (too many micro$oft imitators?) that just shows a blank blue screen. No making out the shadow, no idea as to how close you are to a better reception.

And hey, the static(the white and black variety) had something really important in it. Almost 1% of it is radiation from the very edge of the universe. Yup, you were getting the live transmission of the noise from the most primordial source. And that has been replaced by a blank blue absurdity.

I want my static back!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The excitement of waiting to watch the only serials aired then, like hum log & nukad. Not to forget the chitrahar and rangoli which were the only musical entertainments, when all the plans for the evening or morning were centered around that time so that we don't miss it :) DD did make its own efforts in reaching out to all the people by playing the different regional language movies on Sunday afternoons, one of the few times we realized how many different languages the country had. DD, good old DD :)

-PS