Sunday Ritual - Doordarshan Time..!

In the 90's, growing up was uncomplicated and active! 

We had mud on clothes, scratches worn as war  medals, anticipating cousins' visits, waiting for holidays to go to nani-house, calling from the round-dial telephones and much more. 

One vivid memory, etched for eternity, is fine tuning the old television set manually to smooth out wrinkles of Doordarshan Channel!

Elders fondly recollect shows like Hum Log, Karamchand, Mungerilal ke haseen sapne, News, Surabhi etc while we have great memories of Shaktimaan, Alif Laila, Ramayana,Shri Krishna etc.

School time discussions centered around shaktimaan and emulating his spinning action. Andhera kayam rahe! 

Discussions at home revolved around renuka shahane's hairstyle and signature namaste. 

Mythological gyaan was duly enriched by Ramanand sagar's Shri Krishna and Ramayana. 

BR Chopra's Mahabharata! 

Every 90's kid will at least have a vague outline along with protagonists names and characters of the 2 legendary works, Ramayana and Mahabharata.

A typical sunday morning scene featured gulping a glass of milk in front of the TV screen, while mom screamed "peeche baitho, aankhen kharab ho jaayegi"! 

Grandma literally used to worship Lord Rama on TV when Ramayana used to be telecasted. 

Lord Krishna seemed to be manifested in Nitish Bharadwaj ( the actor).

Mahabharata and Ramayana war scenes (arrows flying, thunderstorms etc) introduced the concept of graphics and VFX, albeit in nascent stage. 

Alif Laila took us to exotic lands of djinns,chudails and treasure hunts.  Show me a single person who isn't fascinated with such stories! 

Who can forget the multi coloured vertical lines before the start of any show or in case of "inconvenience is regretted"! 

 Such was the massive following and power of visuals.

Sacrosanct time for the entire family. Congregate on your assigned seats and watch TV. No fighting over remotes ( there weren't any!) or having a plethora of channels to choose from. Just one and only one, Doordarshan! 

This blog post is inspired from Indispire topic on Indiblogger.