The DD kid

When I was a 10-year-old, I never thought it would happen. But it happens so frequently now that it makes me chuckle. For someone who grew up hating that little television set that only had two channels on it, I never could anticipate the tinkle in my eyes these days every time someone mentions the word ‘Doordarshan’ to me. The same word would induce a yawn several years ago. But not now. In fact, lately, years after Doordarshan is out of my life, it has turned out to be one of those things I look forward to in a conversation. Over the years, I have come to form the strongest of bonds with people who also grew up having to bear the brunt of two alphabets that collectively represented our misfortune then – DD.

And it’s not without a good reason. Or, at least, I have begun to find some logic behind these bonds as I have grown up. The era in which I was suffering from DD was an era where cable television had permeated most of our lives. In the early 2000s, If we were still having to bear with DD, it was because – let’s be frank – we were middle class. So, the commonality of having grown up watching Doordarshan implies that we both belonged to the same social strata. That, in return, sets off a long chain of similarities. It has almost always meant having no grown up without several luxuries like a car or a personal room or even pocket money.

Not just that, but one can also find similarities in the way the outlook of two people growing up with Doordarshan on their TVs in the 2000s are shaped by that mere fact. We didn’t grow up watching WWE and nor did we get the hang of the English Premier League. Cricket was pretty much all that we had in terms of sports and we formed a relationship with it – whether it be of hate or love. We just didn’t know other sports too well to develop any relationship with them. On the other hand, we knew our music and movies well. The Chitrahaars, the Rangolis and those 4pm movies on Sundays, they made our awareness about music and movies pretty well rounded.

We had heard songs that most of our generation hadn’t yet heard. Of course, the downside was that we knew little about the then recently released music or movies. One thing that the Netflix era would never be able to relate to is waiting for a couple of years to watch a superhit on Television. WE DID THAT. We were still watching Hum Hai Raahi Pyar Ke and Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander when Lagaan was making waves. And sadly, if it was an Emraan Haashmi movie, the result of our long wait would be a terribly trimmed movie whose plot would often make no sense because of the cuts it suffered before being okayed for national broadcast. So, in a way, our sensibilities and moralities also came to be shaped by what we were watching.

Also, we DD people were ‘old souls’ before the word became a mark of pretension. And trust me, as unbelievable as it may sound, it was because of Doordarshan. We weren’t growing up to Dill Mil Gaye or Tom and Jerry. In fact, we were still watching on Television what our parents had watched when they were young. I grew up watching Buniyaad, Udaan, Nukkad. As for children shows, we had Malgudi Days and Tara Ki Duniya every Sunday to- not entertain us - but teach us morals. This generally meant that we often didn’t have a lot to contribute when our friends would discuss their fancily named cartoon shows. But hey! we were more than handy at the Antakshri that the elder members of the family played. Now you get the ‘old soul’ bit, don’t you?

And trust me, for a 10-year-old, contributing to elderly discussions was never going to be enough. If anything, it just was our saving grace, a much-needed one for a self-esteem battered by not knowing Hannah Montana or Rikishi or Hatim Tai when all of our friends were talking all of that. We were never ‘cool’ in a generation that had developed the word ‘cool’. Hence, we were always looking for something else to redeem ourselves. Something that would make us ‘cool’ as well.

Over all these years, the years we tried and failed to become cool, we have grown up to understand the blessing in disguise that was DD. Yes, we were not the coolest of our generation but we got something very special to look back over a cup of tea or coffee that others won’t be able to make much sense of easily.

* This blog post is dedicated to a certain Chandramouli Singh, a colleague with whom I developed a very special friendship over everything that was 90s, including Doordarshan.