Doordarshan celebrated fifty years of existence this week. None of the hazaar news channels seemed to even mention it. They seem to have all the time in the world to discuss the possibility of animal mortality amongst other things, but can't be bothered with what preceded them all. Looks like they think that they're brand value will be lost by referring to a network that broadcasts News without infinite looped video clips and jarring background scores (and with added goodies of awkward silence while the video runs through). A network which created a whole host of quality shows. Quite pathetic that.
Buniyaad etc came out when I was still crawling about on me knees. Even when I was old enough to realise the pictures in the box were telling a story, I couldn't understand the language till very much later cause I didnt understand Hindi at that time. Still one remembers some of the stuff that was on the air. For some wierd reason, I still remember the scene from the Ramayan when Angad is sent to Ravana's court as an envoy. No one who saw Mahabharat can forget the cutting edge special effects of arrows cutting arrows and Brahmastra wielding peoples.
And for the bachas like me, there was Jonny Sakko and the Giant Robot, the Transtel sourced stuff like Telematch/ Pingu etc, fraggle rock + the greatest cartoon of that time - He-Man.
But the one thing that will be hard to forget from that time is the superb montage that used to come up when DD transmission used to start. The psychedelic revolving swirls which eventually formed into the DD logo with that sad but hopeful theme running in the background. Pure brilliance that. More on the montage here.
