Door Darshan - Fond memories

"Rukavat Ke liye Khed hain". If you have not seen this, then I think you are born after 90"s :-)

Well, we grew up "getting interrupted". Those were the good old days of Door Darshan. We had no other option to look at those "Rukavat" messages and ever famous Doordarshan screen saver.

I remember how eagerly we used to wait for the Doordarshan to start the transmission. Till it starts, the screen saver used to entertain us :-)

Once the transmission starts, the announcers used to greet the viewers and give details on the program for the day :-) Well now, there is no start and there is no end for the transmissions :-( Most of the times we don't know what program comes on which channel at what time :-(

I will try to list down here some of my all-time-favorite serials/programs on Doordarshan:

1. Guddada Bhootha : This was just a 13 episode thriller in Kannada. I don't think any of the other "13 episode" serial ever created this much of interest (be in Hindi or in Kannada). This story was about "strange things" happening in a remote village and the "forces" behind such acts.

2. Malgudi Days : Swami and his friends was the best among this. Who can ever forget Master Manjunath playing the character of Swamy and that "Tha na na tha na na na" song. Easily this would have my "top 1", except for the fact that Guddada bootha was so good and created such an impression in 13 episodes, I decided to have Malgudi days in No.2.

3. The World this week : Well, those days, we used to rely on Salma Sultan, Meenu and others to read the news for us. News used to be no different than radio news, just that we were able to see who was reading the news :-) At that time, TWTW created a sensation by bringing the happenings around the world, mostly in videos. Wow, India was slowly getting connected to rest of the world.

4. Ramayana : It was literally self-declared curfew-state throughout India when Ramayana used to be on air every Sunday. For the first time, we saw such special effects on TV. We never expected to see this kind of "special effects" turning into reality in just few years. Thanks (or no-thanks) to CNN, the "special effects and more" of Gulf war was covered Live on TV in 1991.

5. Ye jo hain Zindagi : May be the first "comedy serial" that I watched on TV. At that time, this kind of comedy looked so good and we used to wait weeklong (was it on Friday at 9:20 PM ?) to watch this serial. But recently I saw the repeat of this serial and it looked just so ordinary :-)

6. Sunday afternoon regional language movies: Well, we used to wait for months together to get a "Kannada" movie of the likes "Chomana Dudi", "Kadu", "Tabarana Kathe" etc. :-)

7. Chitrahar, Chitramanjari, Rangoli : Again favorites among all of us. Wednesday and Friday - Chitrahar, Thursdays - Chitramanjari (Kannada film songs). Sunday mornings used to start with Rangoli :-)

8. Jungle Book, Ek-Do-Theen-Char : Ever favorites with us, as kids.

Having listed the best ones on TV, I was also thinking about the most dreaded program on Doordarshan at that time? My vote goes to "Krishi Darshan" at 7 in the evening, everyday !!! What say you? But to be frank, sometimes I used to watch this program as well, if I did not have anything to do.:-)

How about "UGC program" in the afternoons? May be one boring program for me, after Krishi Darshan. Again, just for the heck of it, I used to watch this UGC program sometimes :-)