Warming Up - Nuances of DD

What makes Doordarshan, Doordarshan..
Is it the excessive hamming that you encounter in every other show..
is it the anchor of the shows who could easily have been the guy who hosts the diwali mela for your mohalla...
is it the graphics that make you feel, that the broadcast you are watching has taken 20 years to reach your television...
is it the sets that make you think that the presenter is there to get his passport size photograph clicked...
is it the way actors react without being slapped or hit( as the scene was censored by DD in the movie to be aired)...
is it the fact that most of us have not watched it for more than 10 minutes at a go since the cable television reached our homes...
But as much as this was a jibe at the shabby production values of DD, it was also a way of venting out the disappointment at DD for not being able to progress with time(if it has done anything, it is to deteriorate in all departments).
With no hopes of seeing it get any better, I shall write about the little things that do remain part of our memories for some strange reasons.
Before anyone had ever heard of what set top box or even cable tv was, there was the big aluminum antenna that brought all the colourful pictures to our tv. But it was not always so colourful. The broadcast was not 24x7 and we often encountered the black and white grains, but even then we thought if we looked at it long enough we might still see some things..

This was followed by what I'd call the rainbow stripes. Never understood why they had those. May be too check if all the colours were ok :P .

Then the broadcast started when everybody would hold their breath , as a little red ball was engulfed by something that looked like two red hands. But the two red 'hands' then started revolving around the ball and it looked like that the tv was warming up, as it slowly gained speed and eventually became clearer and clearer. Yes, it was the logo of Doordarshan, with the words 'Satyam Shivam Sundaram' written beneath it. Now, it was up and ready to entertain.
Another part of DD that it introduced in our lives is the 'rukawat ke liye khed hai' message which was quite frequent those days.
There are also a whole lot of other shows and jingles that I'd like to include in this post itself but would have to keep that for the next post.