At The Edge

Cross-posted from my Kashmir blog. In year 1986 Doordarshan ran a tele-film series called 'Katha Sagar' directed by few prominent and few would-be prominent film-makers who presented adaptations of some famous international short stories, but all of them set in various parts of India.  In on of these adaptations, Shyam Benegal turned  Gogol's The Overcoat  into  Nayi Sherwani and set it in Srinagar. The adaption with its scenes of Kashmir life and office bureaucracy makes one think that Gogol had written the story for Kashmir and not Russia (Kashmiri writer Amin Kamil's Kafan Chor seems like a darker sequel to Gogol's story). Here's the film: video link Part 2

A strange new deadly creature has sneaked aboard the ship. The latest maneuver of  Zakhakoo to take down Commander Tara and his city, the last hurdle to his plans of adding earth to his galactic kingdom and the universe. This time he sent a small Blob, strangely, much resembling a stinky wet Upla , a throbbing pack of  cow-dung . The Blob is given to jumps onto its unsuspecting victims and sucks the life force out of them. Soon, this 'death-on-contact-with-skin' creature starts making victims out of helpless citizens of the Space City who have no clue about the nature of these new deaths. As the word slowly spreads,there is mayhem, in this mayhem the Blob zeros in on what could be its most prized victim - Shakti. As a doors open (automatically, woosh -pause- woosh ), Shakti walks in only to be attacked slyly by the Blob. In the manner of its previous killings, this time too, Blob goes for the face, sticking to ...

From West Germany. video link

Basesar Ram had two passions: wine and Mir. Starting July 7, 1984 and ending on December 17, 1985 the trial and tribulation of this alcoholic man's family, its ups and downs, twists and turns, a formula, telecast twice a week, hooked the masses of this nation. Each episode ended with vetran actor Ashok Kumar adding a word of grandfatherly advice, a jargon, a 'message'. Basesar Ram could keep Mir but wine had to go. The serial was conceived and run like a state project meant to engineer a better society, a simpler happier Middle class. The great experiment had its origins in the Left back-lanes of South America where a poor migrant girl in Peru could sews her way to riches. That was the basic premise of Perunivan telenovela, 'Simplemente Maria'. Produced in 1969 by Miguel Sabido for Mexico's  Televisa it had proved to be a working and highly successful formula, creating a television revolution in Latin America. Singer, the sewing m...

Kitu Gidwani as a Doordarshan presenter Peenaz Masani on cover of Playback magazine. August 1987. A regular for new year celebration of Doordarshan. Sample this

Some people recall the faces and some people recall the names. Here are images of some of the famous readers and presenters of Doordarshan down the years. If you recognize any of them, leave a comment. [ Update 1 : Most of the faces now have names thanks to helpful comments by olio-gallimaufry ] [ Update 2 : Included image of one of the earliest presenters, Gopal Kaul. Send in generously from personal collection by son, Ashutosh Kaul. Sept, 2010.] [ Major Update 3: Got a tip-off about a documentary about the famous faces of Doordarshan from the makers   of     “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan ” from which these caps were taken. I managed to catch the incredible documentary and am adding some more faces/name and part of the docu here. New ones can be found after the image of  Narotam Puri. 30th Oct, 2010]  Pratima Puri. Believed to be the first Doordarshan reader.

Cross posted to my Kashmir Blog . -0- Late 1960s, Gopal Kaul was one of the earliest and famous faces of Doordarshan. According to one of the most intriguing and famous stories from the early days of Doordarshan, Gopal Kaul, in a somewhat comic way, was the reason why Salma Sultan became a newsreader. The story goes that Gopal Kaul, who was already a known face on Doordarshan, didn't want to be a newsreader, he wanted to be a producer and was always was often at loggerheads with the DD people. One day to put an end to his newsreading tussle, in a unique way of protest, Gopal Kaul reported to job with his head completely shaved off. An emergency replacement was found nearby in Salma Sultan. In my post about ' Famous old faces of Doordarshan ' Gopal Kaul was one big and obvious missing name as I couldn't find a single image of him online. But then recently, Gopal Kaul's son Ashutosh Kaul wrote to me and generously offered to share his...

From Hindustan Times dated Saturday July 17, 2010. They published extracts from C.G. Somiah's 'The Honest Always Stand Alone'. Interesting read. But it was the image that really caught my goat. It was my goat. My yellow goat in their brown barn. See the collage used as inset image. I created that collage way back in 2007 for my post on Indian 80s . Here's the actual collage: I have taken a lot of stuff from them and I certainly don't mind if they took something from me. 

Moved into this room, looked around, and in a corner found this old color TV. BPL. Solid IC. 12 Channel. Modified to 200 channel. Year 1989. This was the first colour TV that I ever saw. It was the pride procession of an Uncle. Every Sunday, I will go over to my cousin's place to watch Ramayan followed by He-Man; all in color on a Tv of this very model. Ah, the Sunday's spent screaming 'I have the power' while holding a stick.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Kamla Nehru in their wedding dress. There is something strange going on at Doordarshan. On the occasion of Nehru's birthday, which is celebrated in India as 'Children's Day', they showed Sai Paranjape's Bhago Boot (2001). True to the old time-tested tradition of Doordarshan, that's all well and fine. I used to enjoy these kid movies shown religiously (often repeated) on this particular day . But this year, thanks to the digitalization and restoration of old archives, the film was preceded with a special presentation - an old reel having Chacha Nehru talking to a group of Kids about need for Children's cinema whose 'best judge should be children'. Between the clicks of camera, you could see the old man entertaining the kids with his famous talking skills. Rapt audience, which included his grandchildren - young Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi, he told the kids that American films are sometimes good but often they have too much v...

From Wiki entry for Rakesh Sharma Insignia of Indo Soviet Mission Rakesh Sharma, then squadron leader and pilot with the Indian Air Force embarked on the historic mission in 1984 as part of a joint space program between the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Soviet Intercosmos space program and spent eight days in space aboard the Salyut 7 space station. Launched along with two other Soviet cosmonauts aboard Soyuz T-11 on the 2 April 1984 , was 35-year-old Rakesh Sharma. During the flight, Squadron Leader Sharma conducted multi-spectral photography of northern India in anticipation of the construction of hydroelectric power stations in the Himalayas. The trip made Rakesh Sharma the first Indian in Space but the event is also remembered for a conversation from space that he had with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She asked him, 'How does India look from Oopar ?' He famous reply, borrowed from Allama Iqbal, was, ' Saare Jahan Se Achcha, (better than the w...

[ Rukawat key liye Khed hai. Updated this post with Video Documentary by Doordarshan titled “The Golden Trail , DD@50 :Special feature on Golden Jubilee of Doordarshan”.] Doordarshan turned 50 on 15 September 2009. It all started exactly 50 years ago, on  15 September 1959 with UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, it's one of those organizations that we read a lot about in school text books, anyway)  giving India $20,000 and 180 Philips sets - Doordarshan was supposed to be (and was) a tool for development. Also according to the legend, the broadcasting equipment was donated by Germans who had come for an industrial exhibition. AIR (All India Radio) supplied floor space and initial news content.

Another relic from Doordarshan days. I remember it for the various sport logos. I think this sports show (Khiladi) was telecast during 1987 South Asian Games held in Calcutta.

"The hiss of TV static denotes remnant radiation that still lingers from the big bang 14.5 billion years ago."  - National Geographic, February 2003 September 2009 marks the 50th year of dear old national broadcaster Doordarshan.  Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe, I told my Uncle about it and he didn't believe it. He thought Doordarshan must have started in 1960s, it should only be around 40 years old. 

2nd September, 2009 Rewind: The video of Alisha Chinoy song 'De,de,de,de dil de de Mujhko', a single from her 1994 album 'Bombay Girl', was deemed too improper, almost indecent, outright Adult for the vetted audience of the national broadcaster - Doordarshan.  The hot video directed by Ken Ghosh came out in 1996 quick on the heels of success of their previous collaboration for video of 'Made in India' - a phenomena that led to the boom of 'Indi-Pop' which continued for about half a decade till the fizz slowly died down. 'Indecent Exposure' by Alisha Chinoy didn't keep Doordarshan.from showing the video in one of their 'Indi-Pop' countdown shows running on DD Metro. They did show it, complete, no cuts, it wasn't banned outright, but they did pixelate the offending parts. So the audience, perplexed, got to see heavily pixelated cleavage of Alisha Chinoy. Let's just say, as you can see from the sample image, it didn't h...

Amita Malik “the first lady of Indian media" was born in Guwahati to Bengali family in 1921, she joined the All India Radio as a casual staff in Lucknow in 1944 and moved to Delhi as a permanent employee in 1946. She passed away on 22 February, 2009 at the age of 87. It was passing of an era. For six decades, at one time or another she wrote about Cinema for The Statesman, The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, Indian Express and more recently, Pioneer and Tribune. And for television:  She worked with stalwarts like Melville de Mellow and A.S. Bokhari and interviewed people such as Satyajit Ray, Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, John Masters, David Niven and Alfred Hitchcock. Malik’s work in both AIR and Doordarshan comprise important chapters in the history of Indian broadcasting. Sadly, many of these are now missing. Typically, Doordarshan managed to erase the recording of Amita’s joint interview with Satyajit Ray and Marlon Brando and her interview with the ‘father of the...

And this is how in the 80s, late at night, they introduced films to the viewer. video link The film is Wadia Movietone's The Court Dancer (1941) Thanks to an incredible effort by Alaknanda2007 Do read about it.

Salma Sultan, read news on Doordarshan between 1967 and 1997. But that doesn't tell much about her. In the color 80s she became known for the rose worn low in her hair and her style saris. I remember when she used to say. ' Namaskar. Aaj ke Samachar. Is prakar... ' and sitting in front of the TV set old ladies of the house would reply back to her greeting saying, ' Namaskar . Namaskar . Bless you! Urzu! (Kashmiri word for Good Health)' Watching television was something else in those days. -0- Here's how Salma Sultan  started out: Her entry into news reading too had been quite a hilarious experience. After doing her post graduation from English Literature from I. P. College, Delhi, she started working with Doordarshan as an announcer and presenter. "Those days (1967-68), they would not take young people for news reading but mature ones. Pratima Puri and Gopal Kaul were regular faces then. But Kaul never wanted to read news so once, when it was time ...

 Awesome title track of the immensely popular comedy show  'Flop Show' (1989) directed by Jaspal Bhatti. video link Download the Song here: 1.18 Mb,1.17 min,128Kbps. If I remember right then the music was composed by Louis Banks. Lyrics of the crazy Flop song...almost: Bow Wow. Bow Bow Bow Flop Show Fa.Fa.Fa.FaFaa.Fa.FaFaa.Fa.Flop Zoooom in, Zoooom out Zoom in, Zoom out Fade in, Fade out Pan in(?), drop in(?). oohh aah AaAah. Wide Shot(?). Pull Shot. oohh aah AaAah. Tilt up, Tilt Down, Camera now fell down Flop Show, Flop Show, Flop Show Flop Show Bow Wow. Bow Bow Bow Flop Show Writerrr, Fighterrr Writer, Fighter, Producer Director  Singer, Actor. oohhaah AaAah. Light man, Trolley man. oohh aah AaAah. Cameramaaan, Everymaaan FLOP Flop Show, Flop Show, Flop Show, Flop Show -0-

video link Mero gaam katha parey Gujarati folk based original music by Vanraj Bhatia for Shyam Benegal's Manthan (1976). In 1977, this film, produced by 500,000 farmers of Gujarat, won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and National Film Award for Best Screenplay for Vijay Tendulkar . Preeti Sagar, the voice of this song, won Filmfare award for best female singer that year. A more mainstream version of the song was later used as the soundtrack for the television commercial for Amul. [ video ]. -0- You can also check out Vanraj Bhatia's Soundtrack for Tamas here -0- Manthan is now available for free viewing thanks to Amul.tv . They have also uploaded some episodes of Siddharth Kak produced popular show Surabhi .  Amul never fails to surprise: Amul Girl hit ads, spanning 1976 - till date, were already availabe online , and now they have also uploaded some old ads of Amul . -0- Also, you can watch video of two utterly butterly old telev...