Call it a case of things looking good when you turn the clock back, but of late, I have been doing a lot of introspection about the kind of time I spend watching television (which gets lesser with each day), and my thoughts are invariably drawn towards days when we had just one channel to watch..good old doordarshan.
Its been a long time since I watched this channel (a couple of years at the minimum) owing to the fact that it doesnt come across through my cable. I do not even know the kind of programmes that are currently on air by India's public channel. The last time I watched a doordarshan serial was at a friend's place and I was unpleasantly shocked to see that even DD had gone into the saas-bahu-daayan culture.
Yet, in retrospect, I think the Doordarshan I watched a few years back was much better than the private channels that are currently in vogue now (at least in the metros). I will take up each aspect of entertainment one by one for comparison.
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Serials:Some of the best serials I have watched on television were aired by
Doordarshan.Period. Let me recount some....
- Buniyaad 2. Hum Log 3. Tamas 4. Nukkad 5. Circus
There were also serials based on short stories of eminent authors and most of the time, the acting was perfect, even though the production values were not. Literary works of A O Hume, Satyajit Ray, Tolstoy, Premchand, Amrita Pritam were retold in serials directed by some of the best people in the business. Despite all talks of nepotism and red-tape, Doordarshan did bring to to our living rooms, serials which did made you sit up and take notice.
Buniyaad, Hum Log, Ramayan and Mahabharat were national anticipations. Cutting across all barriers, these serials made busy roads come to a standstill. And it was not as if they did not deserve the attention they got. Then, there was Vikram aur betaal, which, despite its poor quality of production managed to tell some very interesting stories of yore with a moral to boot.
The only serial I have heard people mentioning with some glee nowadays is ''Jassi jaise koi nahin'' but I have not watched it yet and I now hear that it is a remake of a spanish(?) serial.
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Comedy: None of the serials I have watched on private channels can match the funny bone of ''Yeh Jo hai zindagi'' and the serial produced by Jaya Bahaduri (I forget the name). Decent without being slapstick, they did think of comedy as serious business. And of course, DD used to air ''The LUCY SHOW'' and the like (Gawd how I miss them!). In contrast, the comedy aired by private channels makes me puke.
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Knowledge:Quiz time by Siddharth Basu and ''whats the good word'' by sabina merchant were classy and did more for the intellectuals of a nation than what the quizzes promising millions actually did.
There's mastermind on BBC by Siddharth basu now but it is SO intellectual that it really doesnt involve the common man at all. If I get five answers in every episode of mastermind, I consider myself a genius. In contrast, Quiz time had generous rounds of audio and visual rounds and kept your rivetted to your seat.
Theres BQC for children on Zee now and something of a sports quiz on Star sports but I am still waiting for something like Quiz time which combined the best questions from every field.
In between Siddharth's serious demeanour and Renuka shahane's plastic smile, Surabhi brought the best of India and the world in half an hour every sunday.
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Movie Music:Most of the entertainment channels now are nothing but movie music channels in reality. Gone are the days when one could watch chitrahaar with every song being heard to its conclusion. Chitrahaar was topped by its better version ''rangoli'' on sundays. Some long forgotten songs were brought to our homes. Irrespective of which private channel I turn to now for music , I have a music clipping from an unreleased movie or semi-nude girls dancing to remixes of classics. My heart weeps for the generation that is accepting all this in the name of music.
I watched Lata Mangeshkarji cringe when she was watching her own song remade and being performed in front of her at a concert recently. If I was in her place, I would have walked out. It is her greatness that made her sit and accept her award in all humility.
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General Music: The Bhimsen Joshi - Balamurali krishna concert, the operas, the ballets, the jazz concerts....DD brought to me the best of different kinds of music.
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Movies:The need to go to a theatre itself has come down with the number of channels falling over each other to get you the latest movie at your doorstep. Agreed, DD did not get the latest movies but there was a time when they had movies from regional languages being screened on sunday afternoons. Through them, I was exposed to some lovely movies from different Indian languages. Despite its prudishness, DD did start the adult movie screening at midnight (what if it was watched more by kids and teenagers after their parents went to sleep?).
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Sports:I do not watch too much of sports but I remember having watched some of the best Wimbledon matches on DD. Also the cricket matches. Being a non-classified channel, DD did its best to cater to its wide variety of audience.
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- News: This is the only place according to me where the private channels overtook DD. Most of the news being partisan to the current government,improper utilisation of its infrastructure, haggard looking news readers....everything went against DD and I guess, continues to go still. In all probability, when I switch on DD news, I guess I will still get to watch Salma sultan and the bald headed raman in action.
To give them their due, DD did experiment with Urdu, Sanskrit news and even news for the dumb and deaf.
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Krishi Darshan:I know lots of people who made fun of this serial but this was one programme that my servant and gardener watched avidly. My gardener took to cultivating mushrooms and I guess must be much richer than me by now at the rate I saw his business growing. I feel happy that this was beofre the times of saas bahu serials when his wife would not have allowed him to watch krishi darshan.
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UGC:Agreed, that UGC doesnt have the chutzpah of the National Geographic or discovery, but for a channel which came to your door free of cost, it indeed was a good attempt. I did get some good basics of chemistry from this programme. And it helped lots of my friends too.
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It might not be classy any more to watch DD and treat it as an object of ridicule but I guess, this channel did set some standards for TV programming in India. The private channels got a feel of the Indian taste through this enterprise and set upon harvesting this knowledge. In my opinion, DD still conjured some of the most courageous acts worthy of emulation by the private channels.
