When I was searching for my brother's gift I came across DVDs of old TV shows. It brought back all my childhood nostalgia. Udaan which inspired me to write civil services (i din't clear evn the prelims is a separate story), Fauji, which made me fall in love with army officials, zabaan sambal ke got me interested in languages, nukkad, made me relook at street dwellers and even buniyaad which got me involved with the family's trials n travails! we had interesting sitcoms like Yeh jo hai zindagi or sarabhai v sarabhai which could give a serious competition to english sitcoms.
Not just hindi shows, even tamil had interesting line ups with film directors like balachander taking interesting stories or picturisation of sivasanakari's novel. I think we evn had good novels taken as serials. In English we had Different strokes, Yes Minister (what a show!), Barbapapa (did i get the name right?), He Man, powers of the Universe, or how could i forget Sandakon (Kabir Bedi in Italian production!!!) another one action show Nightrider????
But there were varieties! and we didnt have them for years. we had limited episode shows. i think the longest was for 52 episodes i think. and we didnt have daily shows. Only Buniyaad had twice a week, the rest were weekly shows. But i remember following each story religiously and get inspired by the lead roles. we laughed and cried with them.
So when i came across the old ones, i went crazy and ended up buying dvds for more than Rs.2000/- (dont ever shop online in latenights! that is when you will go crazy and blow your money!) But i was all excited to get back my childhood nostalgic memories. Money worth spending! So when my dvds came i was all set to see them in a marathon. No, i cant finish it at one go. it has to be treasured.
So i started with a easytowatch tamil sitcom called 'Vanna kolangal' by S.V.Shekar. this was again part of my childhood sundays. i remember sitting in front of tv on sunday mornings (with mom shouting for not doing housework evn on sundays! no one bothered. we were used to my mom's bg voice) waiting for the show to start.
After watching a few episodes, i found that the jokes were not that funny and i could see other drawbacks not just the story. still i told myself, this is 20 years back, so there might be flaws but let me watch it for the humour. The stories were humorous but one thing i found was it was outdated. For example one story spoke about going to dubai. Though cheats are there evn today, the fascination towards working in middle east has gone down. but still foreign jobs fascination is still there. the humor was not the same. Did i grow up? or is the story not really relevant today?
Next i watched katha sagar. For the people who dont know what it is: this was a collection of short stories taken from world popular writers like chekov, o henry and contextualised to indian context and it was directed by Shyam Benegal. You cant get bigger director than him.
i watched one story by Munro. To my surprise i enjoyed it evn more than my childhood days. it was about an old man getting cheated by a guy who says he lost his way. (which has happened to me in real life too) i think timeless classics are timeless indeed. they stand the test of time!
i dont know how will i react to my other dvds but i am keen to know it myself. Have i outgrown it or have they stood the passage of time!!!
But i seriously wish we get such good tv shows today. we had just one national and one metro channel but we had such variety programmes. today we have 100s of channels but same programmes in every channel. same old stories! only way for our tv shows to get back their early glory is to first limit the number of episodes. No year long shows! then quality could come back!
My nostalgic memory shopping gave me mixed feelings! Still i have some more videos to check out! keeping fingers crossed!
Not just hindi shows, even tamil had interesting line ups with film directors like balachander taking interesting stories or picturisation of sivasanakari's novel. I think we evn had good novels taken as serials. In English we had Different strokes, Yes Minister (what a show!), Barbapapa (did i get the name right?), He Man, powers of the Universe, or how could i forget Sandakon (Kabir Bedi in Italian production!!!) another one action show Nightrider????
But there were varieties! and we didnt have them for years. we had limited episode shows. i think the longest was for 52 episodes i think. and we didnt have daily shows. Only Buniyaad had twice a week, the rest were weekly shows. But i remember following each story religiously and get inspired by the lead roles. we laughed and cried with them.
So when i came across the old ones, i went crazy and ended up buying dvds for more than Rs.2000/- (dont ever shop online in latenights! that is when you will go crazy and blow your money!) But i was all excited to get back my childhood nostalgic memories. Money worth spending! So when my dvds came i was all set to see them in a marathon. No, i cant finish it at one go. it has to be treasured.
So i started with a easytowatch tamil sitcom called 'Vanna kolangal' by S.V.Shekar. this was again part of my childhood sundays. i remember sitting in front of tv on sunday mornings (with mom shouting for not doing housework evn on sundays! no one bothered. we were used to my mom's bg voice) waiting for the show to start.
After watching a few episodes, i found that the jokes were not that funny and i could see other drawbacks not just the story. still i told myself, this is 20 years back, so there might be flaws but let me watch it for the humour. The stories were humorous but one thing i found was it was outdated. For example one story spoke about going to dubai. Though cheats are there evn today, the fascination towards working in middle east has gone down. but still foreign jobs fascination is still there. the humor was not the same. Did i grow up? or is the story not really relevant today?
Next i watched katha sagar. For the people who dont know what it is: this was a collection of short stories taken from world popular writers like chekov, o henry and contextualised to indian context and it was directed by Shyam Benegal. You cant get bigger director than him.
i watched one story by Munro. To my surprise i enjoyed it evn more than my childhood days. it was about an old man getting cheated by a guy who says he lost his way. (which has happened to me in real life too) i think timeless classics are timeless indeed. they stand the test of time!
i dont know how will i react to my other dvds but i am keen to know it myself. Have i outgrown it or have they stood the passage of time!!!
But i seriously wish we get such good tv shows today. we had just one national and one metro channel but we had such variety programmes. today we have 100s of channels but same programmes in every channel. same old stories! only way for our tv shows to get back their early glory is to first limit the number of episodes. No year long shows! then quality could come back!
My nostalgic memory shopping gave me mixed feelings! Still i have some more videos to check out! keeping fingers crossed!
