A couple of weeks ago, I posted an old photograph of my mum, Gitanjali Aiyar, on twitter. Within a few hours my social media feed was drowning in likes and retweets; a flood that none of my own paltry writing has ever provoked. My mother, you see, had been a celebrity and an influencer in the 1980s, long before it became possible for anyone with good photo filters and an Instagram account to claim the same.
In the great era of terrestrial TV, she had ruled the screens of hundreds of millions of Indians, first in black and white and later in colour. My mum was a newsreader on the single, state-owned channel, Doordarshan - that equated to all of TV in India - before the advent of cable and long before streaming meant anything other than a verb that applied to rivers.
Doordarshan News Music Download
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My mother read the prime-time news in English at 9:00pm, a few days a week for over a decade. She dressed in a saree and wore a bindi, spoke in a starched accent and read out government-sanitised events - heavy on grainy footage of dignitaries meeting other dignitaries - from a teleprompter, and often from pages of paper, when the teleprompters failed, which was often.
I had been aware of her celebrity as a child, of course. But it was like a distant hum. Other kids watched their mums cook in the kitchen. I watched mine read out boring stuff on TV. The result: I never learned to cook.
Today our ugliness is revealed to us in loud technicolour and there is no escape from the nightly parade of riots, lynchings, rapes, cricket betting scandals, farmer suicides, Bollywood inanities and political bile. Newsrooms are public spectacle. And I suspect, despite their addicted participation in it all, TV news audiences feels somewhat soiled by their prurience.
Hence the outpouring of nostalgia my tweet elicited. It expressed a desire for a time when there was less choice and less news, and even the fact that we had less. In the 80s, an ice-cream could make you happy.
And when you watched TV, it was in a crowded room, often with neighbours and stray aunties crammed onto the sofa and chairs, and sprawled on the carpet on the floor. No one had smart phones to commune with, so they communed with each other, humming in unison to the advertising jingles of the few consumer products that made life easier: Hawkins pressure cookers, Harrison talas, Nirma detergent tikias, Liril soap.
How fascinating, and what a star your mum was (is!). Like Hasan, I'm going to stick up for the DD theme music - the sound quality on the youtube clip is awful (you wouldn't know that was a shehnai) and doesn't do it justice. The music was indeed composed and arranged by Ravi Shankar in 1976, specially for DD, based on his own melody for Sare Jahan Se Accha. It definitely has a melancholy about it, and probably wouldn't get a look on today's TV, but I think it's beautiful and evocative!
Quick appeal up front for you guys to subscribe. You can read this for free, but if at all possible, do pay. I know you wouldn\u2019t expect a free lunch every week, and this is food for thought, I hope.
In 1980s India - what my children refer to as \u201Colden times,\u201D - the news, dull as it was by today\u2019s infotainement standards, was about as exciting as watching TV could get. The alternative was krishidarshan (literally: agricultural tour) a one-hour daily programme about the latest in seed technology.
TV was only broadcast for a few hours a day. I think it came on at about 6:00pm in the evening, and the minutes leading up to the broadcast displayed the channel\u2019s oddly mesmerizing logo \u2013 something that looked like an arthritic supernova glitchily expanding to fill the screen, all to the rhythm of a tune so mournful that it would give the average funeral dirge fomo.
The funny thing is that if the response to my mum\u2019s pic on twitter is anything to go by, there is nothing sarcastic about that sentiment. Seeing an old clipping of my mother advertising Solidaire, a brand of TV set, unearthed a well of nostalgia that runs deep.
\u201CYour mum is a legend. Articulate, dignified. She signified a different news experience when the anchor delivered the news and wasn\u2019t the news themself, yet we knew and thought much better of them.\u201D
\u201CPlease give respect from our side, one her fan. still remember her and all the news anchors of that era. Their Sarees, Flowers in hair, Pen in the coat, the voice, the grace and above all, command over language.\u201D
\u201CThese days it is horrible to see our anchors dressing up in western attire. Just does not suit them. Why cant the govt pass an order on the dress code. A bit of Talibanism is required for control\u201D
The truly bizarre thing is that this was twitter and I didn\u2019t receive a single nasty reply. Not one. Well, there was one that read, \u201CYou must take after your father,\u201D (!) but that was trolling me, not my mum. It was almost like we were back in the 80s, a time when trolls were gnarly giants who remained safely confined between the covers of Tolkien novels.
So, my takeaway from this outpouring of affection was that people liked how my mother dressed and how she spoke. Many learned their English by watching her contemporaries and her read out the news. My mum - whom I mostly tend to think of with affectionate frustration as the kind of person who can\u2019t figure out how to use \u201CThe Facebook\u201D or work the microwave (\u201Cyou press the button that says start, Mama\u201D) - had been community, nation-building, marmite-icon and fashion advisor rolled into a nightly package. Wow!
Torrents of water have flown down the Ganga since the 80s. And when it comes to India\u2019s mediascape, its another country. From the one-channel era of Doordarshan that my mum encapsulated, the country now offers over 900 TV channels, including terrestrial, satellite and cable.
Indians no longer need to watch programmes about harvesting technology al\u00E1 krishidarshan for their nightly fix. They have a vertiginous choice of sitcoms, soaps, quizzes, thrillers, horror, reality TV, etc etc. And if all of these aren\u2019t entertainment enough, there is always the news.
A proliferation of 24-7 news channels and a penchant for TV news as a Roman arena, has assured this. News in India today is blood sport. It is presided over by self-appointed caesars of morality - the contemporary \u201Cnews\u201D anchor - who self-righteously pass judgement on the invited combatants, as they shout and rage at each other about caste, religion, politics and every other faultline that splits India into a kaleidoscope of tragedy.
The news that my mother used to read out was tedious and censored in the \u201Cpublic good\u201D as defined by the government of the day. But I suppose, when compared to the three-ring circus of today, there was something soothing about it. We could all go to bed having learned some diction and sleep the dreams of the unaware.
Gosh, I do sound maudlin. Am I just showing my age? Is everybody nostalgic for their youth? Why does it always feel like the old days were the \u201Cgood\u201D old days? Tell me what you think in the comments section, please.
This will expand the reach of DD News, DD India and multiple language services of DD News amongst the Indian Diaspora in Australia. Through this MoU, the two broadcasters will explore opportunities in co-production and joint broadcasting of programmes spanning multiple genres. They will also exchange programmes (Radio and Television content) in the fields of culture, education, science, entertainment, sports, news, travel, music and arts.
Both public broadcasters will also exchange professionals and organise their training to share knowledge on technical knowhow and programme production, etc. They will provide facilities and general assistance, including supply of information and other organisational and technical assistance, to each other. 152ee80cbc
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