Television. An eye into the world for some, idiot box for others. A waste of time for some, lifelong companion for others. November 21 was World Television Day and The Telegraph Salt Lake spoke to viewers to find out their relationship with the telly.
Films, sports, music, cartoons, news, knowledge…the TV offers them all. But perhaps the genre viewers form the strongest bonds with is soap operas.
Small screen fans
Ninety-year-old Bhaktilata Chakraborty is a self-confessed soap-aholic and says it all began with Janmobhumi screened in the 1990s. “I used to loved that show about India’s freedom struggle and watched it every evening. Even if some guest came home at that time, I’d make him sit till the end before tending to him,” says the AE Block resident. Now Chakraborty likes Big Boss and reality dance shows.
Trina Banerjee, who works at HSBC’s Karunamoyee branch, remembers how crazy she was about the Ekta Kapoor serial Kahin to Hoga during her college days. “I lived in a PG in Kankurgachhi that didn’t have a TV. But our neighbour would watch that show and my roommate and I would try to peep through her window to watch it,” she says.
Luck was tough as the neighbour would watch TV in an air-conditioned room with the windows shut. So Trina and her friend would hike up to the terrace and tug at the wires of the neighbour’s house. It would loosen their AC cables and make it stop working. “To beat the heat the lady would open her window and voila! We would watch the show,” she giggles.
Passive viewing
Like passive smokers, there’s a big chunk of passive TV watchers too. “My two-year-old daughter Sneha knows the characters of all Bengali television serials,” says Rijita Shome, a bank employee who lives in CA Block. “We have to leave her in the care of a sitter in the afternoons and Sneha ends up watching serials with the sitter. No matter how hard I try to show her educational videos later, she keeps pestering me to tune in to Jol Nupur or Potolkumar Gaanwala,” says the worried mother.
It’s the same story at an FD Block household, where the cook Champa Biswas watches serials while looking after a three-year-old girl. “In my house my son wields the TV remote so I have to watch serials while babysitting. The child watches Ichchhenodi and Bodhuboron with me and we switch to cartoons like Oggy and the Cockroaches and Shaun the Sheep during commercial breaks,” says Biswas.
Jayesh Saha, a college-goer who lives near City Centre, says he grew up watching Uttam Kumar films and English films with his grandparents. “It’s from them that I’ve developed a taste for sensible films,” he says.
Avantika Bajaj, a hotel management student at IIHM, says she got drawn to mythology thanks to her granny’s serials. “My brother and father watch cricket or football in the living room so I am forced to watch TV with granny in her room. She watches mythological shows and so now I’m hooked to them too,” she says. “I’m even reading mythological books by authors like Amish now.”
One TV too many
There are two teenagers in Neha Chanda’s house, along with her mother-in-law, husband and herself.
“There are times, especially on holidays, when everyone wants to watch different shows simultaneously. So we got two TV sets. Now there’s less chaos at home,” says the DL Block resident.
Chakraborty’s house has three televisions. “There used to be constant fights over the remote but when my grandson got his first job he bought me an LCD TV for my bedroom. There’s another TV in the drawing room where everyone watches cricket or films and a third TV in my daughter-in-law’s bedroom. She watches cookery shows,” she says.
Suraj Lalchandani, of City Centre’s Samsung outlet, says second TVs were rare when their store opened 11 years ago. “TVs were very expensive then and there weren’t that many channels either. But now many are buying a 49-55 inch TV for the living room, and one or two smaller ones for the bedrooms. This is the trend abroad too,” he says.
TV, but not on TV
The net-savvy generation watches TV shows on the internet. “We have two TV sets at home but still I hardly get a chance to watch Game of Thrones or Beauty & the Beast on it,” says Sourav Modak, an engineering student who lives in Purbachal. “Instead of buying a third TV and set top box, we got unlimited internet connection. Now I watch all my shows on Youtube or Hotstar. I even follow cricket on the cricinfo website.”
Ranjeet Ojha, an IT sector employee of FD Block, has not bought a TV at all but still manages to watch reruns of Friends or Sex and the City. “I invested in an unlimited internet connection and now watch shows at any time of the day.”
Anandita Banerjee of AD Block watches four serials a day, but all within a compact 35 minutes. And it’s possible as she watches them all on her phone using the internet. “Since there are no ad breaks the shows are shorter than on TV. Plus I skip past long dialogues. In fact I watch the shows while walking on the treadmill to make optimum use of my time,” she says.
Serial killers
Rupnarayan Bose only watches sports and foreign thrillers like Criminal Minds, House of Cards and White Collar. “Indian serials are unbearable,” he says. “They have no beginning, no middle and refuse to end. They have ridiculous plots, poor production values and over-the-top drama. And the Indian news channels are shouting matches,” says the BE Block resident.
EE Block’s Preetam Mondal, a businessman in his 20s, can’t recall the last time he watched TV. “Indian content hasn’t moved with the times. It deals with the same hackneyed issues as when I was in school,” he says. He too, watches only foreign content like South Park, Dexter and House MD on the internet.
CL Block’s Renu Verma would once tune into Hindi serials but today she says: “Sab bakwas hai! One can’t keep track of the number of affairs the characters have and the number of times they are bumped off and brought back to life. They have no moral, no message; all the women are shown to be shrewd and all the men are showpieces. Now-a-days the serials show black magic and influence elderly audiences who think it is all real,” says Verma who dissuades her grandchildren from watching such shows.
A lady who lives in Sector I says her mother-in-law gets so absorbed in the serials that she gets high blood pressure and even nightmares! “She gets depressed if the protagonist is mistreated, without realising it’s all make-belief,” says the lady.
“Savdhaan India, a real-life crime series, showed a domestic help killing the residents of a house and fleeing with their valuables. My mother-in-law got so scared watching it that she now refuses to hire a fulltime domestic help.”
Trina says she wants to spend some quality time with her parents and in-laws after returning home from work in the evenings but that they are too busy watching serials. “In a world where people are struggling to find time, the elderly are wasting time on senseless shows,” she sighs.
Inside your mind
Clinical and child psychologist Chayanika Singh says there is more to the elderly getting addicted to the TV, than meets the eye. “The TV entered their lives late so their relationship with it is different from that of a child born with a TV in his bedroom. The society was more closed in their youth and the women, particularly, didn’t get the kind of freedom that youths get today. So they identify with the female protagonist of serials and root for her when she is struggling, sympathise with her when she is wronged and celebrate when she succeeds,” says Singh.
They also like seeing the costumes, jewellery and sets of the serials. “The elderly are seldom net-savvy so the TV becomes their only pass time. But what begins as entertainment often becomes an addiction to the extent that they are unable to switch off even after realising that the story has become nonsensical,” she says.
Singh says she gets several elderly women complaining that their husbands want the TV on even when they sleep at night. “Indians live amid noise and some feel insecure if it gets too quiet. A few men however, keep the TV on to drown out their wives’ nagging!” she laughs.
As the counsellor of Hariyana Vidya Mandir, Singh says, the TV is an attraction mainly to students up to the age of 10. They watch cartoons like Chhota Bheem and Doraemon but once they grow older and get mobile phones or gain access to the internet their focus shifts to games, social media or foreign TV shows. “Again most teens prefer foreign shows like Friends as the characters are shown to have way more freedom than they do here in India,” she says.
What is your favourite show on TV and why?
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