Old time: Doordarshan

Now on television there are lots of reality shows, thriller shows, normal saas bahu programs and many other junk shows. But this was not similar 20 years back. Earlier, either when television was not so developed or when few channels were on air, there was less scope of throwing junk at the audience. In that era, in spite of having lesser amount of air time, diverse genre were telecasted.

Until Zee TV had not reached the rural junta, we were fond of DD1, or in other words we were dependent of DD1. On DD I was fond of few specific programs. I think Sunday was my favourite day. I used to watch programs through out the day.

Every Sunday morning 7.15 Rangoli used to cover all latest and classic songs. Once Rangoli was over we were asked to take bath and have breakfast. Once done it was time for chadrakanta, a story of princess deeply in love with the prince of Vijaygarh. DD had pulled out the telecast before completing the series, so I never come across the end of this series. After chandrakanta it was time for Indian superhero Shaktiman, who used to fight with evils to save the world from dark. Malgudi days, an awesome treat to watch, used to follow it. Then few more interesting mythological, and classic shows were telecasted back to back. At 1PM DD used to telecast NEWS for deaf and dumb people. After a while it was time for Shammy Kapoor or Amitabh's movie. Ending time of the movie  used to clash with our playing time, but with little coordination of the friends we used to watch weeping sequence or action sequence of the movie. Once back from most important work, we were again infront of TV searching clues of murder mystry with Mr Vyomkesh Bakshi, who used to solve every non socialistic mystery with his extra ordinary mind. This was general routine for Sunday excluding inevitable last time changes.

Apart from Sunday's telecast there were few big shows on DD. Shanti was my one among my favourites, watching Mandira Bedi fighting with world for her rights was treat to my aunts and me. If I remember Mohan Kapoor's Office-Office series was also started from DD. Few programs which I can not really remember were also in my must watch list and I used to enjoy big time.

As with time things changes and people get to know more about world. Same happened with us. Zee was introduced on our cable. Zee replaced DD and things changed. Now rangoli was replaced with Top 10 with additional spice. Ramayan was more idealistic so Zee chose Krishna to idealize and other things were changed. Zee also brought different variety. Hum Panch, story of husband stuck between one wife hanged on wall and other on neck and father of 5 female monsters, was always enjoyable. Then I do not remember much apart from one that I always wanted to see and could not ever watch on TV.

First horror show, in the history of Indian television, Zee Horror Show was introduced. I used to hear a lot about it from people in my school. They used to talk about the story and thrill of the horror. I myself decided to have a look on the show. I prepared myself to watch the show with whole family as it was famous in my family as well. The show used to start with the cat's voice. That was it. I heard the sound of cat and never ever watched Zee horror show. I was so frightened that it took almost 2 hours to settle my nerves down. After almost 16 years I watched few episodes of it on youtube and found out how silly i was to get so scared with such an idiotic and childish horror.

Anyways law also forbid to punish a minor, so as I forgiven myself for such a childish act. But that television era has left permanent spots in memory which are not yet faded a little and I do not think they will fade down further.

Tea Breaks

In India tea breaks, with colleagues, are the part of our job. We are not paid only for working but apart from our work there are lot other factors which contribute to our compensation. Few of those factors are gossips@work place, unworthy meeting, town hall meetings to present nothing but some figures to stop people from leaving company, idiotic boring and unnecessary product trainings (To hamper the confidence of a person who is already working on same product for past 6 year) and tea breaks. There are chances to avoid few of these factors by displaying affection to your work but it is inevitable to avoid Tea-Breaks. Not that you want to invite acidic problems by sipping more and more coffee but the depth of these discussions pull you out of your seat. These breaks are funny, knowledgeable (At times you get to know about the new entrants in office. :) ), harsh, and few of these discussions are not categorized.

In general these discussions erupt based on crowd. When you are coming with colleagues including team lead or manager you got to talk about sports i.e. Cricket, Hockey, Football, CWG, you talk about cars in the market, pollution, population, crowd on the road, places to visit around Karnataka, some philosophy, some debates, pulling someone's leg, photography, driving, movies, songs, player, composer, director, festivals and many more interesting topic. Moreover these discussions keep repeating with the time and new facts keep emerging.

Oh there are times when your TL and manager do not accompany you, it is time to discuss company, its future, our compensation, manager, work, TL, plans for MBA, plans for leaving company (Though no one reveals it), HR policies and rarely general discussions. In a way these discussions are as interesting as discussing cricket in public as everyone is indulged in it from core of his heart.

Apart from these groups there is one more group, called office friend (Group where you can crib about anything to everything... Even about your desperation to have a girl friend.). These creatures have the least number of topics to discuss. For me I end up talking about table tennis, new gals employee, so called chicks, MBA college, disputes and problems within team and manager, Daaru parties and some time trying out plans to explore places around Bangalore.

All these discussions are quite exciting and ice breaking in itself. These tea breaks add lot more different flavors to the boring office life and this is the reason we Indians love them most.