Yeh Meri (TV) Family
Photo: Sven Scheuermeier on Unsplash
Perhaps there is no greater entertainment that an Indian family fighting for the remote control. From the first cable connection to OTT streaming, Shubham Pal recalls his childhood and family life in front of the television set.
I was six-years-old when two men carrying long and thick wounded cables started fixing our television at home. My sister, who was ten, was happily scampering about the drawing-room. Being the youngest in a house, I kept running after her, clueless. Meanwhile, my father took the two men to the roof, where they began to fix the antenna for some reason.
It all finally made sense when they returned downstairs, and on the TV in the drawing-room, there was something that put a broad grin on everybody’s faces.
We had a cable connection!
It was pretty rare to have a colour TV with a cable connection back then. My sister would take charge of the remote control while I’d sit beside her and try to understand what those 15-odd buttons meant. We slowly moved on from Byomkesh Bakshi to shows like Grihalaxmi Ka Jinn and Rajni on Zee TV. Byomkesh Bakshi, in particular, was easily one of the best shows to have ever been telecast on our television sets. Then, there was about half an hour on cable dedicated entirely to the recent Bollywood hits. I picked up most of the songs from there. Thanks to my limited vocabulary, “Oh Julie Julie Julie tu ladki nahi mamooli,” became “Oh Julie Julie Julie tu ladki hai ya mooli”.
Now, our cable guy was quite the God of all cable-wallahs in Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh). He would print the entire programme schedule in tiny booklets and distribute it to every home at the beginning of the month. My sis would carefully teach me how to find everything worth watching under the respective channels with the correct time. We’d highlight important shows like WWF, Tom & Jerry, Dennis the Menace, Small Wonder, The Three Stooges, Different Strokes, Hum Paanch, and movies like Hatim Tai (starring Jeetendra), Jurassic Park and new Sunny Deol films, primarily because my sister was a huge fan—and remains one till date.
I do vividly remember those days, when a memorable opening tune would start playing, and a black-and-white sketch of a railway station would appear on our screens. At once, we would abandon everything to sit in front of the TV with the whole family to follow all that is happening in the fictional town of Malgudi. Those were the late 90s when things seemed a lot simpler and laid-back. Even after all these years, whenever I think about Malgudi Days, a smile invariably comes onto my face. I’ve often wondered why? Perhaps, it’s because Malgudi Days was like a box of assorted chocolates—each episode was disparate, each with its own unique flavour, but all set in one town, showing the struggles of ordinary people like you and I. This is what differentiated this iconic television series from the rest, because it managed to directly connect with its audience by telling fictional human stories in a realistic but engaging manner, the credit for which must be given to the great Indian writer, R. K. Narayan.
Although the Indian mythological epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana were the most popular TV shows during those days, but I was always more fond of Malgudi Days. This is not to say that I didn’t like those other shows, but I just felt a more natural connect with the latter. This, I assume, was because of its realism. The characters somehow felt like the next-door neighbour, or the shopkeeper down the alley, or a friend at school. Simply put, they felt like people I could relate to.
Then came the emergence of Shaktimaan, which was nothing short of remarkable in the history of Indian television. Shaktimaan was, is, and will always be, the superhero closest to our hearts. No, he wasn’t world-class hero material by any standards. But those who sat with their faces cupped in their palms and watched it week after week weren't really looking for anything too advanced. Millions of kids who got a break on Sunday were anxious enough to see how Shaktimaan would fare and defeat against Kapaala or Kilwish. It was a TV serial that told a superhero story, and no one in India had done it before in full earnest.
Perhaps, it’s because Malgudi Days was like a box of assorted chocolates—each episode was disparate, each with its own unique flavour, but all set in one town, showing the struggles of ordinary people like you and I. This is what differentiated this iconic television series from the rest, because it managed to directly connect with its audience by telling fictional human stories in a realistic but engaging manner.
Mukesh Khanna, the lead actor, made a good superhero, and an even better alter ego. It was fun to watch and made for a great conversation the next morning at school. The adage, “Andhera kaayam rahe” became popular between kids in school. Discussions happened on the previous episodes about how Shaktimaan had defeated the villain. We got temporary tattoos of Shaktimaan from bubble-gum wrappers. The show was all that we had on our mind, every week.
The producers would have obviously seen an opportunity for public service messaging to the millions of children who watched the show. Right after Shaktimaan ended, a new segment began, ‘Choti Choti Magar Moti Baatein’, which attempted to give us a moral compass. It dealt with small things like washing our hands regularly, or social skills like talking politely and respecting the elders.
My mother found it rather interesting that she could call the cable guy any time and ask him to show one of those old Rajesh Khanna movies (her childhood crush) on the local Prime TV channels. They would both decide the time, and the Mothership would watch all the movies of her choice every day when she was free. All this at no extra charge (as opposed to modern Tata Sky Showcase!).
As we grew older, Sony stopped airing the shows we liked, and Star Plus started off with the famous saas-bahu saga, which meant that the remote control now remained snugly tucked under mother’s pillow. Arguing for the remote was a lost cause now. We sat with her daily, dealing with problems like thousand-crore business deals between suited and booted businessmen, many of whom seemed to spend more time with their love interests than at work. There were nonsensical conversations between Banarasi sari-clad women bathing in gold, there was polygamy, and there were ‘vamps’. Gradually, we lost our childhood to all of them.
Eventually, I became a couch potato again, with shows like Shri Sifarishi Lal, Yes Boss, Family No.1 and Office Office on SAB TV. No one can forget the great Mussaddi Lal in the latter, who tickled our funny bones while getting the work done in torpor government offices. Dekh Bhai Dekh was one of the most popular comedy shows and was a part and parcel of our childhood. Our whole family adored each and every character of the Diwan family. When Star One aired Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, we felt that healthy comedy had made a comeback.
But then, the wise man’s words came true again: all good things came to an end. We were reduced to watching scripted reality shows, more reality shows, family drama, stories of the nouveau-riche, more family drama, and yes, some more family drama. So much so that music channels became entertainment channels and started airing unreal teenage shows. Cartoon Network and Disney were hijacked by Japanese characters that had a common superpower of getting on your nerves within nanoseconds.
The democratisation of content can be seen in the evolution of reality-TV shows. While Zee’s Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Sony’s Indian Idol and Sony’s Boogie Woogie were early frontrunners in this genre, it was Star’s Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) that truly showcased the potential of this genre. A prominent KBC feature was featuring contestants that were small-town people from normal walks of life—teachers, clerks, shop-owners—who sat face-to-face on the ‘hot seat’ with Amitabh Bachchan. This was a silver-screen equaliser that symbolically flattened the class differentiation. Bachchan has always been gifted in connecting and engaging with his audience. His charisma, personality, screen presence, politeness, and his baritone gave the show its soul.
Indian Idol, on the other hand, was a totally new concept in the country. Here were three judges, one grumpy, the other-a fan favourite and third a choreographer. Those were the times when literally everyone in the family watched TV together. Each family member had their favourites. My sisters loved Abhijeet Sawant and Rahul Vaidya, perhaps maybe for their cute looks. Others (like me) loved Amit Sana. Dad used to like someone traditional. I used to sneak up on Dad’s mobile phone and text in support of my favourite singer even though it cost around like 10 bucks each time. No wonder that the talent hunt shows remain sure-shot eye-ball grabbers even today, mirroring the restlessness in small-town aspirational Indians.
In the early 2000s, there were only five channels for us: DD1, Star Plus, Sahara One (where we turned for Simba cartoons), Aaj Tak and Star Sports. That’s it. But DTH (Direct-To-Home) changed everything; after we got the DTH connection, we were transfixed on TV for weeks. 190 channels! We didn’t know the name of some of them, but it felt great just to have choices.
(Thankfully, our current Tata Sky connection saved us the old trouble of memorising the TV schedule in addition to the textbook rote-learning).
Our family was always a TV family. Our TV-time started at around 6 am in the morning and went on till 12-midnight. For kids, Tom & Jerry was showing on Cartoon Network pretty much all day. So were TaleSpin, DuckTales, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons.
Dad took control of most of the things. He literally watched everything, from news to sports to Bollywood, Hollywood, Nat Geo documentaries, reality shows, and Hindi soap-operas. But when our cartoon timings clashed with his sports… well, that’s when we felt his wrath!
“Hey, we’re gonna watch some cricket,” he would announce. “It’s live. You kids can watch the cartoons later.” In retaliation, my sister and I would plead for “Tom & Jerry, Tom & Jerry” in unison. He would tell us that Tom and Jerry have gone to bed, and then mumble, “The way TV now… a stupid cat and mouse are on all day long. Why won’t they give it a rest?” He would finally give into our demands and flip to our cartoon, and flip back and forth during commercial breaks. We cried if we missed anything, like Jerry slamming a whole saucepan on Tom’s face.
Sure, I love watching shows on OTT (Over The Top) services, but somehow, they can never match the family struggles we used to have. Now, there were no fights between the siblings for the remote control.
Aah, time has flown by quickly since. Here came the content revolution of streaming services. The quality of the shows went up. Production value increased. Content creators were in plenty. Scripts were amassed. The streaming wars began.
Netflix came into the Indian market and changed the whole TV structure. Sure, Hotstar was present much earlier, but Netflix had a bigger influence, investing heavily on in-country original scripts, with the revenue to fund the creation of original shows. It was a frenzy.
Streaming services are essentially a storehouse of content, including movies, documentaries, and television series, both pre-existing and their own. For a flat monthly fee, subscribers can consume any programme at any time on whatever device they prefer. Suddenly, there was something for everyone on the Internet. Every teenager has a mobile phone now, where they get to watch their favourite shows. And the most important feature of the streaming services was binge-watching. People could watch their favourite shows in one sitting and were not be compelled to wait for a week to know the next part of the story.
The cords were being cut. TVs were relegated to watching sports and news within the family, for which it still felt most appropriate. We became sociopaths.
Now, we’re not mad at Dad for needing to watch something of our own. We know we would find it on a streaming service, and if not, there is always Youtube. Dad, too, watches Netflix every now and then, but backs away when he sees a compromised thumbnail of some show which he still thinks will affect his kids’ innocence. The other day the Fathership asked me about Sacred Games, about which he has heard so much about. Well, I was unable to explain the plot to him, and we just left it at that.
Sure, I love watching shows on OTT (Over The Top) services, but somehow, they can never match the family struggles we used to have. Now, there were no fights between the siblings for the remote control. Dad won’t be giving in to our demands—which he looked forward to every single day. Mother won’t have to wait till Sunday morning to watch her favourite actor’s songs. She can watch him whenever she wanted on Youtube. (I recently found out that she has lost interest on Rajesh Khanna and started liking Hrithik Roshan. Nuh uh! I was never expecting this change from te Mothership). I’m watching some crime-thriller on Netflix, my sister is watching Korean soap operas and shows like Little Things, cute and light-hearted millennial stories.
From a one-stop TV to multiple screens on the house, the television settings in Indian households have really changed. It makes me cringe how so much has transformed within a decade, and how technology has even affected our behaviour. We don’t know what the next decade will bring—only time will tell.
Guilty as charged, I still watch a lot TV. I don’t even know if I can even call it that: ‘watching TV’, because I barely look at it anymore. I only turn it on to provide background music while I’m on the laptop browsing Netflix to better shows, so that the silence—sitting alone—doesn’t creep me out.
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Shubham Pal is an IT Analyst at an MNC in Bangalore who also talks about football, entertainment, TV series and being a millennial in the World Wide Web. He's a pop-culture aficionado, sofa-athlete, earphones abuser, movie go-er, and a pseudo-funny person. He writes speculative fictions, non-fictions, poems, tech newsletters and anything and more. His articles have been published in The Telegraph and The Shillong Times. You can find him on Twitter: @sweatyshirt or Instagram: @shubhamishahn.
