Television

I have grown with the television. It first came to India around the time that I was born, so I have even lived in a house where there was no TV, though after a point the TV became something everybody had, so imagining a house without a TV is so hard.

I have seen the TV grow from a huge bulky box with antennae to the sleek, awesome LCD screens of today. I have seen the TV grow from DD1 and DD2 to 500 TV channels on Satellite Network Television. I have seen in grow. I have seen it grow from ‘button on the telly’ operate to remote control. It has metamorphosed from the tiny box to the Home Theatre System.

And we too have grown along with the television; grown from that crazy phase of addiction to ‘the idiot box’ (remember Roald Dahl’s poem ‘On Television’ from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and how everybody loved it because it told the story of the television in every household at that point?) to the ‘Aah, so who feels like channel surfing today?’. The TV has become so common that it is merely another piece of furniture, a common must-have article in the house. In fact, it will soon probably become a fashion not to have a television set at home!

Also, people are too ga-ga over the computer now for the television to hold their interest any longer. Although, one must admit, that however old the television gets, it is one of the ‘coolest’ inventions of mankind!