Since I am suffering from "bloggers block", I decided to repost one of my posts which I had entered for the India Smiles Contest. 

And lead us not into temptation...!!

December 31 1995 –“And lead us not into temptation.” The temptation was the cable TV connection, which had laid its foot in Chennai during that time . No one in our family would have imagined that it would turn out to be such a a memorable day. It was the time when Chennai Doordarshan ruled the roost with its “Oliyum Oliyum” (Movie songs) and “Vayalum Vazhvum” (Agriculture). Metro Channel came in and “Metro Priya” popularized the channel with her beautiful grin and her sweet countdowns.

The Metro channel was new with advertisers sponsoring the programmes and hence people had hopes of getting more quality in the programmes aired by Metro. Metro offered “Junoon” and “Yehi hai Zindagi” in Hindi. Junoon was becoming famous among housewives and Metro Channel tried to woo the housewives with its translation of the Hindi soaps in Tamil. It was fun watching Hindi actors and actresses talking funny Tamil but however this spelt doom for the Tamil audience forever because of late it has all grown out of proportions and has turned into never ending mega serials. The Junoon Tamil was the most favourite among the critics and Chennai people got stuck to the new lingo and forgot their usual Chennai lingo.

The cable TV connection was becoming popular and people started watching SUN TV which had a lot more to offer than the Chennai Doordarshan. People were getting fed up of watching the “Vayalum Vazhvum”, all about agriculture that Doordarshan offered them . They had now become experts now in what fertilisers to use and how to prevent diseases of plants and animals. Their favorites were the Sunday movie but Doordarshan refused to show them the latest movies and stuck to the old Sivaji, MGR and Gemini starrers.

Our next-door neighbours had got this cable TV connection and neatly described to me what SUN TV had to offer to us and how I am missing those latest movies and the Balachander serials I was tempted. My children and myself asked my husband to get a connection for our flat he refused saying our son should pass +2 and fulfill his “IIT” dreams. Till then “Chup! No cable TV!” But my son was very certain that he cannot wait till April to watch the SUN TV programmes about which his friends were boasting about. He was fed up of the Jupon lingo and wanted to badly hear some “nice” Tamil.

He pleaded and begged and promised that he would become an IITian despite of the attractive distraction. We were in deep argument when my servant maid, a teenage girl, suggested a brilliant idea. She said there is a way to connect the neighbour’s cable to our TV antenna. All it needs is a “Gundoosi” (a pin). We were all so thrilled at the idea. I waited for the neighbours to lock their door and go out. Then my servant maid caught the cable wire above our entrance door and the wire connecting the TV antenna. She made a small slit in the cable and inserted the pin and connected our antenna, then bent the pin around it so that the cable and the antenna touched each other.

My son shouted from inside the house that he could actually see and hear the SUN TV.

Though the picture clarity was minimum the sound was clear and we expected a further improvement in future. There were grains but we were gloating at the success of installing our neighbour’s cable connection in our TV and were quite satisfied at the achievement. We put up with the grains because we were happy that at least we could hear the dialogues and were eagerly watching them just as we used to hear the soundtrack of films in the radio.

When my nephew came home the next day, my son described with excitement about how his technical brain has worked (what he had been doing was just switching the TV on and off and adjusting it to get a clear picture). My nephew watched it but then he said “ Yeah.ok.but there are grains.Lets see what we can do about it”. He was already an IITian and he wanted to prove his worth. He cut the cable a little more, till the copper wire inside showed clearly, bent the pin tightly. He wouldn’t have even known what he did, but whatever he did was a success and the picture was a little clearer.

Now it was the D-day. The channels were announcing the New Year programmes, which were to be aired that day. Having connected it, we were eagerly waiting to watch the programmes aired by SUN TV. It was around 7 PM in the evening and my husband came home from office and he was equally eager to watch the programmes.

We closed the door and with a lot of excitement and started watching the programmes with a lot of hush hush and low volume. My husband felt that the picture wasn’t so clear and now it was his turn to meddle with the cable. He took up a blade and went towards the door. He slit it further and it was completely cut. Not knowing what to do I suggest to him to stick a cello tape around it and hide the slit.

But the picture being clear we continued to enjoy the programmes.suddenly there was a noise outside. My son hastily switched off the TV and looked through the magic eye of the door. It was the cable Walla checking the cable! Stunned and not knowing what to do, my son was watching the whole show from inside through the magic eye and passing information to us about what they were doing outside. He said they all have left. And we shouted with excitement that he had not noticed the grafting (!) and heaving a sigh of relief we started watching the programmes again. Hardly 10 minutes passed and we could hear the cable Walla shouting outside “ Who did they think I am? Are they playing with me? They wont even watch TV hereafter” and then went off. We opened the door slowly and to our shock we found that the connecting wire to the TV antenna had been cut too! So the day passed without watching even Chennai Doordarshan and Metro!

The New Year Eve could not be forgotten. The next day however we put up a brave front and showed ourselves to our neighbours and wished them a very happy new year and perhaps they had forgiven us for this mean behaviour possibly because I had been helping her out now and then by offering to keep their door keys with me when they went out and collecting their mails and handing over to them etc.

The funny part of the whole incident or it was irony I can say this cable operator was dominating our area because he was the only cable operator around and incidentally we had to go back to him in April to get the cable connection officially!

PS: I was again reminded of this incident now because technology is so advanced that DTH has become the talk of the day, offering 100 channels plus, etc.