No matter how much we live in the present - No matter how much we live in the present, no matter how much we convince ourselves that what is gone is gone, now think about the future, but our childhood and the memories associated with it get refreshed. Something or the other happens to us which brings back some picture or memory of the past moment. The same happened that night.
Navratri night and childhood memories- It was the time of Navratri. The surrounding environment was turning into a festive atmosphere. Bhakti songs of the mother goddess were playing and dandiya and garba songs were also playing. I too had come back from the nearby temple after enjoying the songs and dandiya and was lying on my bed and my son was also sleeping with me. At that time only my son and I were in the room. The rest of the people must have been busy finishing their work. My son likes talking and sleeping with me, so whenever he gets a chance, he sleeps with me. The next day was a holiday from his school, so he talked a lot with me for a while and then slept. I too told him many stories, which is my childhood habit.
Childhood and stories - My childhood was also spent in the nineties, so it is obvious that I have a very old connection with stories, tales and riddles. In my childhood, my evenings and nights, especially the nights during holidays, were spent in listening and telling stories with my brothers and sisters and sometimes with friends. If I find someone like this in today's time or get a chance, then that childhood gathering is definitely recreated. But in today's time, this happens only once or twice or almost never because the time has changed, that time and environment was different and today's environment is different. How right and how wrong this change is can be a subject of research. By the way, on thinking, it seems that I wish that childhood and those golden moments would come back again.
That night and the memory of Doordarshan -That night too I told stories and tales to my son. After some time he slept. The lights in the room were off. Since there was a temple in the room, a Diya was burning in front of the picture of Durga Mata. The sound of TV was coming from the neighbor's house. Maybe someone was watching a movie or a serial, I don't know. Anyway, this is the era of remotes, maybe he was changing the channel.
The darkness in the room, the burning of the lamp, the sound coming from the neighbour's television, all this reminded me of my childhood in the nineties, of my village on the other side of the river Ganga, of those peaceful nights spent in the courtyard of the house, of the lamp burning in the shelf, of the era of Doordarshan.
Village and the era of black and white TV - I was remembering that time and was feeling the same as I felt in those days. In those days, not everyone had a television, only a few had a television. And even in that, only a few had a colour TV. My house was also one of those few houses in the village where there was a television but it was black and white.
Sometimes we had to go to someone's house where we were lucky to watch a film or any other programme on colour TV, then that moment felt like a special moment for us. We used to feel very proud in telling this to our friends and used to tell them with great happiness that hey bhaiya (this word was used for friend or brother) you know today I saw this film on colour TV in so and so's house and this was the hero in that film and then we used to tell the story of the whole film especially the Dhishoom Dhishoom scene with great enthusiasm and passion.
Although there was no electricity in the village in those days, electricity wires had reached but electricity came sometimes and even today the condition of the village is almost the same in terms of electricity.
VCR trend in village - Sometimes it also happened that there was no electricity in the house. A wedding procession would come and stay inside the village or a little outside the village or there would be some similar program like the program of Janmastami festival. In those days, watching movies on VCR at night was very common in such programs. People, especially the youth and growing children of that time, would be excited that today the video is going to come, it will start at this time, movies will be available to watch, that too on a big colour TV. But going out to watch movies was prohibited in my family. Lying on my cot (charpai) in the light of a Diya burning on the shelf in my dark courtyard, when the sound of a movie coming from a distance, I would yearn that if only I was also watching that movie, it would be so much fun, especially thinking about a scene of Dhishoom Dhishoom. Sometimes, I used to curse in anger that God should break their TV or VCR.
Village people's thinking about cinema - In those days, going to the cinema theatre and watching a movie was not considered good in our village. Those days, people who wanted to watch movies, used to watch. How could we go to the cinema theatre, as there was no theatre in the village or around the village, so no one wanted to miss the opportunity to watch a movie through a VCR.
If a youth or a man from the village went to the nearby city and watched a movie in the cinema theatre and came in the notice of the villagers, then people used to talk about him in such a way that so and so's son watches Salima (in those days, the people of the village used to call cinema as Salima). Tell me, they are sent to study and they watch Salima. They waste their parents' money. They learn wrong things by watching Salima and get spoiled.
Eager to watch the movie - I was remembering all these things but in that dark room, the sound of the neighbour's TV reminded me of a special day in the village. I was probably a fourth class student then. Summer vacations had begun. There was a wedding in my house. The day the wedding procession came was probably a Friday. In those days, Hindi movies used to be shown on Doordarshan after 9 pm on Fridays and Saturdays. We used to wait for the movie impatiently for a week. We used to wait so impatiently as to which movie was going to be released. In those days, we used to see in advance which movie was going to be released in the newspaper, especially the newspaper before Friday, that this movie was going to be released at such and such time on a particular day. And sometimes we used to guess from the name of the movie, used to imagine how the movie would be and what all could happen in it.
Wedding Night and Movie - So now I come to that day. It was probably a Friday. It was dark. The wedding procession had come and stayed. An action movie was going to be released at night. We children had planned that while going towards the wedding procession, we will watch the movie on the TV of the house situated on the outskirts of the village and after that we will go to the wedding procession and listen to Birha.
But a plan is a plan, it is not necessary that it always succeeds. So this plan also did not succeed properly. What happened was that when we knocked on the door of that house, no one opened the door. But the sound of the movie was coming from their TV. It becomes very late at 9 in the night in the village and it is not considered right to visit someone's house at this time. No matter how much we kept knocking the door and calling out to open the door, we are children. But it did not make any difference to them.
The sound of the movie made us children feel more excited to watch the movie. We went to other houses nearby but it did not work out there as well.
Then we went inside our village and went to the neighbor of our house and it worked out there, they opened the door because they liked us children a lot and the reason for liking us was that there were no children in their house. But our plan was not completely successful. The film was about to end. The action scene was over. The hero of the film had been shot by the police and he had died.
Change of time and division of entertainment - By the way, entertainment was half-hearted in those days and even today it is half-hearted despite so many facilities of entertainment. In those days, sometimes due to lack of electricity, sometimes due to no one opening the door, sometimes due to sleeping early at night to go to school in the morning. But after the TV came home, it feels very good to remember all the programs that we watched on Doordarshan with the family
Even today, entertainment is half-hearted because now it is not the same as those days when everyone used to sit together and watch a program. Now of course, entertainment options have come from different TV channels to smartphones and OTT platforms. But now such programs are made that they are not worth watching by everyone sitting together. Even if they are, not everyone likes them. Now due to smartphones, everyone has their own favorite programs. Everyone is busy watching their programs sometimes lying down and sometimes sitting in different corners. It seems that in this changing time with migration, separatism, partition, entertainment is also getting divided. And it is possible that by the time this happens, a time may come when watching a good program together with friends and family will almost come to an end. And this will become a thing of the past and the people of the next generation will be surprised to hear and know that there was a time when people used to sit with their family, neighbors, friends and watch entertaining programs. For example, today's children are very surprised to know that there used to be a black and white TV and it used to have only one channel. It did not have the facility of different channels and remote.
It used to have an antenna to get the signal which was installed on the roof of the house. If the weather turns bad, the antenna rotates due to wind, a bird comes and sits on the antenna, someone shakes or rotates the antenna due to mischief, then the signal does not come. One had to go and turn the antenna in the right direction. And whoever did mischief of this kind had to be treated. By the way, most of the time the matter was solved by scolding. Mostly the person doing such mischief was a child.
But in today's era of mobile and laptop, it is not a big deal to search and watch any film of that time. If seen, everything is a game of time. Earlier there was a black and white TV which did not have a remote and there was no option to change the channel. Use of antenna to catch the signal. After that, first the color TV came, then remote and separate channels, then the trend of VCR, then the trend of CD player and DVD player, then the trend of pen drive, from the trend of memory card to the trend of watching online programs in our smartphones and who knows what changes will happen with time in the future.
What's gone is bygones - Thinking that what is gone is gone, I thought it best to turn around and sleep. Memories will keep coming back. Old times cannot be brought back but one can live today by feeling the same way as they did then, with the same happiness and energy. After staying awake and thinking for a long time, I thought it best to sleep. After all, it is important to wake up early in the morning after getting enough sleep.
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