White Noise

My resident psychologist, Groucho Marx is of the opinion that television is very educating for every time someone turns it on he’d go to the other room and read a book.

I couldn't agree with him more.

In addition to my radio blues, my TV was out of action for almost two weeks.

Life seemed nice for the two weeks my television was dead; I surfed the Internet more than ever before in addition to almost finishing ICon, the biography of Steve Jobs. But the best thing was, not having to mindlessly surf channels in the pursuit of something half way decent. These days I consider the news channels to be most entertaining.

News is real entertainment for where else can you watch Raju Srivastav's mindless stand up comedy on two channels simultaneously- Star News and Aaj Tak. The dude has his own show on Aaj Tak! Makes me wonder what ever happened to the Sabse Tez channel? Maybe they realized the they were a tad too fast and if they had to continue, they'd have ended up making up news; which they do most of the times- remember the driverless car story in December 2006! Most film channels have taken it upon themselves to recover money for the producers of films like Nayak, Aamdani Athani Kharcha Rupaiya and Lakeer by repeating them week after week either as 'Friday Fury' 'Sunday Mega Movie' or 'Tea Time Treat'!

My mother finally called the Samsung guys to fix the darn machine. The back panel of the TV was unscrewed to reveal five years worth of dirt giving stiff competition to the dirt on TV channels! Tata Sky threatens to make my life jhinga la-la once again!

But did I miss anything while the TV was comatose?

Not really.

After senselessly surfing the only thing that caught my attention were those teleshopping network advertisements featuring a pipe-puffing Sherlock Holmes look alike who insists that English ain’t a language but a lifestyle and convinced me that my lifestyle sucked!

After fifteen days of no TV what do I see when I finally get on- CNN-IBN's promo departments crowing glory proclaiming that they were the only guys who got it right when their exit polls predicted that Mayawati's BSP would sweep the Uttar Pradesh elections. Dream on dudes! You guys were way off the mark on every other prediction and one mistake being turned into a marketing gimmick ain't impressing me.

I like CNN-IBN; I couldn't stand Rajdeep Sardesai till he was with NDTV, why’d I see someone trying to Prannoy Roy when I can see the real McCoy!? But once Rajdeep Sardesai left NDTV and became his own man I started liking his style. When I see him now, I kind of believe what he says to be the ‘news!’ But that advertisement was a little too much to take. Actually with a slogan like theirs, "Whatever It Takes" (freak predictions coming true included!) nothing surprises me anymore.

All hail Bruce Springsteen, the prophet!

Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched 'round and 'round 'til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin' on…

Radio Ga-Ga

Now that I have a car I did what one does best to kill time in the car- tune radio channels! Between December last and now, the period when I didn’t have a set of four-wheels much has changed in the world of airwaves. Six months ago there were, I think, just 5 or 6 radio stations- Radio City 91.FM, Red FM 93.5, Radio Mirchi 98.3FM and the ever popular 102.6 Mz, the station of the nation. The 5th one being the 104-point something on which I usually got the news and caught the cricket commentary on and the last one being the non-stop non-sense RJ less 95FM. Most car stereos have 6 pre-sets and this worked just fine for me. Thanks to our country’s ass kicking growth all around we are blessed with almost 12 radio stations and like everything else many more in the pipeline.

Radio is seeing the same boom that television saw a few years ago and radio stars now have hoardings too, something that their TV cousins never managed!

I thought that there would finally be some quality stuff to choose from but I don’t have to tell you that the more things change, the more they remain same. On my recent drive from New Friends Colony to Gurgaon; a journey that lasted almost 100 minutes covereing almost three states, well over 30 kms and all this while none of the channels played one single song that I liked! I went ballistic flipping through the stations; you see I don’t want to miss that one song which I want to hum. But all I found was either cheap ads mimicked in Mr. Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone about the boom in real estate or Himesh crooning away to glory across the board. Adding to my plight was a HAL like computer sounding voice on my cell phone that had Himesh playing in the background; the toll free call informed me that it was Himesh’s birthday and they were giving way Himesh songs as caller ID’s instead of the boring tring-tring at concession prices. Thanks, but no thanks.

So what’s the point in having so many stations when you are to be plagued by the same non-sense? Maybe there’s a bigger truth to it but I guess I’m being shortsighted. A few days ago I met someone who was high up in the Radio Mirchi hierarchical tree. She is of the opinion that most radio stations are run by mad monkeys who think that songs like ‘Mard Tangewala’ and other such numbers from the 1980’s are classics. Though I’m not a bumbling chimpanzee, not at least till my last medical check-up, I kinda agree. Think about it…1980’s like almost 30 years ago and that’s time enough for something to become a classic! I found an easy solution to radio problem in Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s live version of Tum Ek Gorakh Dhanda Ho, the darn Qwaali is 30 minutes long and the lyrics are throughly engrossing!

All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio blah blah
Radio what's new ?
Radio, someone still loves you