Idiot and I

If traffic is something people have to fight everyday in metros, it is boredom in smaller towns. More often than not, you are miserably alone. You wouldn’t have too many friends of your age and those who are older have families to go back to. Having got used to always-on internet connectivity for around half a decade, browsing on a USB modem is not an entirely pleasurable experience. All these have pushed me into a forced wedlock with the idiot box. It is boring and utterly irritating. Yet, I go back to it every evening and it is the first thing I see when I wake up each morning. That is why I call it wedlock.

So let me give you a glimpse of my marital bliss. Frankly, I don’t watch anything in particular. I just keep surfing the channels. Today, when my better half was turned on (no pun intended) it was showing one of those soaps. It was a close-up shot of a couple who were holding each other. The teary-eyed lady looked deep into the man’s eyes. I waited for ten minutes but neither of them even batted their eyelids, leave alone indulging in any other motion. The camera showed them in two dozen angles with jarring vocals playing endlessly in the background. I shifted to the next channel.

The enterprising channel was interviewing a maid who supposedly worked in the same neighbourhood where Shiny Ahuja lived. I immediately ran down to the one-room temple below my guest house and thanked God that dogs still do not speak a language the news channels can understand. When I returned, the programme was drawing to a close. The anchor signed off saying, “There is a glaring difference between the on-screen and off-screen images of stars.” What a revelation! Thanks dude. But for you I would have still remained under the belief that Tobey Maguire could actually jump from one skyscraper to another.

My next pit stop was MTV, which more than makes up for the unavailability of FTV. As usual, a bunch of girls were flaunting their long sun-tanned legs performing acts on which even those with abnormally low IQ would have second thoughts. Seeing them being so jobless, wandering without proper cloths or food (they seem to survive on Papayas and Watermelons), I am convinced that recession is for real. I don’t understand why those creative brains that run the ticker refuse to rename roadies and splitsvilla as leggies and stripsvilla. If you try to listen what they speak, it would something like this: “What the *beep*. I know I am the most deserving. This *beep* is trying *beep* me off. Just *beep* off, OK? “

At the succeeding English news channel, after discussing India’s loss at T-20 for more than 20 hours since the loss, the newsreader remarked that a 360 degree coverage of the loss would follow. Can’t we have a 20-20 version of news? When we can have a nano car and nano houses, why not nano news channels? Any business house which starts such a channel can claim to have delivered the biggest CSR.

An aspirin and a few clicks later, I found myself watching Gemini Music. It made me nostalgic. A lot has changed in the last three years, including the name of the channel, but the husky beauty has stuck on. Nothing has changed. Neither her voice nor her wardrobe. Who says that change is the only thing which is constant?

The following 38 channels had the same programme. People of all ages and genders were dancing or singing or doing both. Kids displayed undesirable precociousness in garments and gesticulations. And the judges were those whom people wanted neither to sing nor to dance. Even better if they stayed at home. If not singing and dancing, they set upon narrating jokes on which only the judges laughed and the studio audience clapped. Captive audience in every sense of the term.

At the next click, I returned to where I began. The lady was still looking deeply into the guys’ eyes. The camera must have zoomed in from 845 different angles. Tears, which welled up in her eyes, still did not roll down. I think I must revisit my high school physics and relearn surface tension lessons. I am sure if I can understand this, the Income-tax act would be a cake walk.

I disinterestedly set upon the next round of surfing.......