Dilli door ast/‘Dilli is far’

– Hazrat Nizamuddin

Television arrived in my small hometown in Assam during the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi. Father was reluctant to buy a TV. He had the irritating habit of taking the opinion of his office colleagues before deciding on most things. I was deprived of the pleasure of watching the Games at home. I would accompany the neighbourhood boys and knock on the doors of the few houses that boasted of an antennae sticking out of the garden, or the roof.

Sometimes they opened the door, sometimes they didn’t. They did not want to encourage the idea that they had bought a TV for the neighbourhood. I managed to catch gymnastics, track events, swimming and couple of football matches.

Everything was fascinating on TV. The joy of moving images, to see a world elsewhere unfolding before your eyes, was a new technology of experience.

The 1983 Prudential Cup final at Lords, was a historic moment. We had heard the semifinals on radio. Sandeep Patil was our hero. I watched the final on a small TV at a neighbour’s. The room was packed with people. We cheered every falling West Indian wicket. When Kapil grabbed the edge from Richards at mid-on, we could breathe the making of history. After the final ball, we ran around the sleeping neighbourhood boisterously, just like mad Indian fans ran into the stadium.

The first big event on Doordarshan after the great cricket victory was the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. On the day of the funeral, we were glued to the colour TV in our neighbour’s house. The capital entered my imagination through the leader’s dead body. The bereaved neighbourhood aunts admired Mrs. Gandhi’s guts as a woman in power. But they had celebrated her loss after the Emergency in 1977. They had tears in their eyes, as the hearse moved slowly through the crowded street.

It was my first glimpse of the capital. Delhi meant the faraway seat of power. It was a place where news of the nation comes from. Where leaders live and die. There were close-ups of Mrs. Gandhi in a saffron sari, draped in flowers. I had seen her in a cavalcade twice earlier. She had stood in an open jeep, smiling, with folded hands. I did not know then, her charm was Kashmiri. She looked imposing and vulnerable at the same time.

Indira became India in death.

Rajiv Gandhi reluctantly took over, as the sole beneficiary of dynastic politics. He made a public announcement on DD before Mrs. Gandhi’s funeral, condemning communal hatred and murder. But the state machinery allowed the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi. Gandhi showed ineptitude for political morality. To manipulate the court verdict against Shah Bano, and open the locks of the Babri Masjid for Hindu rituals, were further acts of political expediency. Congress’ commitment to secularism degenerated since 1984.

My father finally abandoned his anxieties, and bought a TV. It was a black-and-white Dyanora. His office colleagues, who had advised him against it, had also buckled under pressure. Their argument that TV would hamper children’s education was a bogey. They did not want to spend money for entertainment. The Bengali middle class had the peculiar habit of testing the worth of a thing at the neighbour’s, before making a choice.

The rising popularity of the serial, Hum Log, may have played a part behind the decision. It had started in July, 1984, but the pace was slow, so we did not miss too much.

The serial is said to be then Information and Broadcasting Minister, Vasant Sathe’s idea, from a Mexican serial on education. Manohar Shyam Joshi, who wrote the script, depicted the lives of a struggling Punjabi middle-class (possibly refugee) family in Delhi.

I particularly liked character of the youngest daughter. She had a quick mind of her own. But all the siblings were endearing.

They took enough risk in their career or romance, within the constraints of their social condition. I met the veteran actor, Vinod Nagpal (who can forget him as Deepti Naval’s music teacher in Chashme Baddoor?), during the book launch of Amitav Ghosh’s novel, River of Smoke in 2001. He was the irritable father in Hum Log, who frequently broke into K.L Saigal songs.

I told him, I felt special meeting the most famous drunkard in the history of Indian television. He laughed, as we recollected the past.

Joshi scripted an even more successful serial of epic proportions in 1986, directed by Ramesh Sippy. Buniyaad, depicted four generations of a Punjabi refugee family from Lahore.

Also read: How the Partition Saga ‘Buniyaad’ Captured the Imagination of the Entire Nation

The central male characters were mostly stiff, except the flamboyant Mazhar Khan. The actresses gave livelier performances. An unmatched Anita Kanwar, Soni Razdan, Kiran Juneja and Neena Gupta, stole the show.

Joshi also wrote the script for the serial, Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne (1989-90), directed by Prakash Jha. Raghubir Yadav brilliantly played a neurotic character resembling the Kafkaesque:

Caught between an authoritative wife at home and boss in office, Mungerilal would escape into dreams of revenge.

Neena Gupta returned as the intense courtesan, Nawab Jaan, in Gulzar’s labour of love and research, Mirza Ghalib (1988). The bare orchestration of the ghazals by Jagjit Singh was perfectly rendered by him.

Naseeruddin Shah’s performance as Ghalib stole the best TV actor award for that year from Om Puri’s role in Govind Nihalani’s Tamas. There is an unforgettable moment when Ghalib hears his ghazal being sung in the courtesan’s apartment above. He pauses and says in astonishment, “Zameen ki cheez, aasman ki taraf kisne uda di?” (“This thing of the earth, who has flown it skywards?”).

It was the beginning of an elusive affair with Nawab Jaan. Ghalib was more than a poet. As Marina Tsvetaeva said of Rilke, Ghalib was “poetry itself”.

It was probably the Ghalib effect, including ghazals by Ghulam Ali and others my elder brother played at home, that drew me to Urdu poetry. Despite a test or an exam the next day, I wouldn’t miss DD’s Mushairas at 11 pm every Friday. I would sit with pen and paper and write down what I could.

Without knowing it, I was part of the dwindling cultural milieu around Urdu poetry. Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, and Saghar Khayyami, among others, stayed in memory. And who can forget Bashir Badr’s courteous warning in our cruel times:

“Dushmanī jam kar karo lekin ye gunjā.ish rahe

jab kabhī ham dost ho jaa.eñ to sharminda na hoñ”

(Be enemies by all means, but allow some room,

that if we ever become friends, we aren’t ashamed for it.)

Nihalani’s intense Partition serialised drama, Tamas (1988) got delayed by controversies. It was finally shown as a late night film.

When I met Om Puri in Delhi during the release of his biography, I told him my favourite scene from the film was, when travelling with his pregnant wife (played by Deepa Sahi) Puri frantically gestured and shouted at the Sikh man (Balraj Sahni) who aimed the rifle at him.

The fear of life in Puri’s eyes, the sudden disability of speech, said everything about the animal condition during Partition. Puri confessed it was his favourite scene from the film as well.

The other late night film mired in controversy and shown after much delay, was Ramesh Sharma’s New Delhi Times (1986). It

was based on the media-politician nexus. Written by Gulzar, it fetched Shashi Kapoor, playing an honest journalist, the best actor award.

Another important telefilm was Sadgati (1981), Satyajit Ray’s adaptation of Munshi Premchand short story. Puri played a Dalit character named Dukhi, who was exploited by a Brahmin priest (Mohan Agashe), and eventually dies.

I mentioned the exceptional death scene to Puri, as one of his memorable ones, where he falls down like a tree while chopping off wood in desperate hunger.

Ray had indeed called it a “deeply angry film.”

DD’s Sunday morning shows were lively. I missed my tabla classes pulling wool over my parents’ eyes to be on time for Star Trek. I couldn’t miss the adventures in space, as much as the Vulcan aura and certainties of Mr. Spock. The serial brought me close to the world of Flash Gordon comics. In one of my favourite episodes, there was a mirror you could hump into, and reach the past. The mirror transformed into a metaphoric object of time.

The flamboyant Jeremy Brett made quite an impression in Sherlock Holmes. I was however unimpressed by David Suchet in Agatha Christie’s Poirot. I had imagined the Belgian to be leaner and more mysterious.

My favourite crime drama on DD was the German serial dubbed in English, Old Fox. Chief detective, Erwin Köster, in the thick of Munich’s snow, didn’t mince his words, or the meat on his plate.

Memorable prime time serials in the 80s included Sai Paranjpye’s Ados Pados. It had actors of the calibre of Amol Palekar, Rameshwari and Hridendranath Chattopadhyay.

Kundan Shah directed Wagle Ki Duniya, based on characters depicting the common man drawn by R.K. Laxman. Anjan Srivastava, playing a clerk, had the most humane grimace of all times.

Kundan Shah teamed up with Saeed Mirza for Nukkad. It depicted the days and nights of labour, and the earthy characters were drawn with sensitivity and humour.

DD’s most popular comedy serials included Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi (1984), directed by Kundan Shah. Everyone was good, but Satish Shah was unstoppable. Jaspal Bhatti’s satire on social issues through his deadpan humour made Flop Show (1989) a huge hit.

DD also had its share of controversial serials for the youth.

In 1987, the serial Subah, its title song composed by R.D Burman, was taken off air due to its theme of drugs. Salim Ahmad Ghouse, playing a drug addict, was a revelation. Ghouse’s animated roar, with his flowing hair, “We are the creatures of the night”, still lingers in memory.

The musical romance brewing in the serial sadly got nipped in the bud. Another serial in 1986, Air Hostess, with Kitu Gidwani in the lead, was taken off for depicting the private lives of air hostesses.

Anything that troubled middle class morality was considered unwatchable. Politicians decided the limits of public morality. Citizens couldn’t decide the limits of political morality. Democracy prospered by unequal rules.

Ghouse returned in Bharat Ek Khoj. It was Shyam Benegal’s tribute to Nehru’s The Discovery of India. Ghouse, as Krishna has a memorable scene with Ila Arun, who plays Gandhari. She curses Krishna, holding him responsible for the war of Kurukshetra. Krishna accepts it, explaining his part in the divine order of violence.

Ghouse also plays Tipu Sultan. Kulbhushan Kharbanda played Akbar, Om Puri played both Ashoka and Aurangzeb, and Naseeruddin Shah played Shivaji.

History was understood as history, as the violent affairs of men. Valour was not as exceptional in history, as the rare, occasional moments of prudence. That is why the idea and possibility of Akbar’s Dīn-i Ilāhī was appealing. History has nothing inspiring, except attempts to overcome it.

We finally enjoyed college romance with Chunauti. The title song, ‘Mann Ek Seepi Hai’, by Amit Kumar, touched the adolescent heart.

We sang it in the classroom on rainy days, when teachers did not take classes due to thin attendance.

There was yet another memorable song by Amit Kumar, ‘Zindagi’, in Mahesh Bhatt’s telefilm, Janam (1985), the story of a struggling filmmaker and illegitimate son (Kumar Gaurav) and a nurse (Shernaz Patel).

There were other serials worth mention. The serial Udaan (1989) showcased the woman IPS officer. Kavita Chaudhary gave a strong performance, aided by Shekhar Kapur.

Kundan Shah returned with Aziz Mirza the same year, for Circus with Shah Rukh Khan in the lead. Khan was earlier introduced in the serial, Fauji, on the life of army commandoes. But Circus, depicting the dying world of an art and mode of livelihood, was more gripping.

Raag Darbari (1986-87), was based on Srilal Shukla’s satirical novel. The actor, Pyare Mohan Sahay played the crafty Vaidyaji. Written in 1968, on the corrupt practices of local politics, the novel is a milestone in Hindi literature.

Shrikant (1987), based on Sarat Chandra’s novel set in late 19th and early 20th century, had Farooq Sheikh and Sujata Mehta in the lead. Malgudi Days (1987), based on R.K. Narayan’s stories was another gem. The title song was composed by L. Vaidyanathan. Master Manjunath was born to play Swami, and Girish Karnad played his articulate father.

Shyam Benegal, Kundan Shah and others directed, Katha Sagar (1986), based on stories by Maupassant, Tolstoy, Chekov and other writers. The episodes had actors like Utpal Dutt, Saeed Jaffrey, Sharmila Tagore, Satyen Kappu, among others.

Om Puri played the role of a Muslim man in ‘Nayi Sherwani, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Overcoat.

The two grand mythological dramas, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana (1987), followed by B.R Chopra’s Mahabharata (1988), brought the country to a standstill, like during cricket matches.

Based on the life of Urdu poets, scripted by Ali Sardar Jafri, Jalal Agha’s Kahkashan (1991) had poor production values.

The ghazals composed by Jagjit Singh stood up to the task: especially Josh Malihabadi’s farewell letter to his hometown, detailing the beauty of Malihabad, and Firaq Gorakhpuri’s melancholic reflections at dusk.

Also read: Glimpses of a Ramayana No Valmiki or Tulsi Wrote

The story of DD is incomplete without its newsreaders. The women newsreaders outshone the men.

Geetanjali Aiyar was much praised for her English diction. There was intrigue regarding the Hindi newsreader, Salma Sultan. She never smiled. There were lighthearted to existential speculations regarding her sadness.

We heard DD received letters with requests for Ms. Sultan to smile. One night, as she signed off after the news, Ms. Sultan finally broke into a smile.

It trended nationwide before the era of Twitter.

Back then, newsreaders did not play anchors to political debates and discussions. There was no breaking and faking news.

In 1987, Prannoy Roy started The World This Week with Appan Menon. As Roy put it, “It was after all the newsiest decade in television history: the Berlin Wall came down; the USSR disintegrated; the scenes of protest and revolution from Tiananmen Square had to be covered.”

A calm, dignified and matter-of-factly Menon, reported from Moscow’s rubbles and Berlin’s euphoria. Private news channels have lost the old distinction between reporting for the people and reporting for the government. The falling standards of television news have impacted India’s political culture.

My mind however goes back to 1984, when DD spent two days on Mrs. Gandhi’s death, but passed over the massacre of Sikhs without a word.

Also read: The Fate of Press Freedom in India Over the Years

DD‘s state-sponsored silence nevertheless pales before the crude and motivated political lies being aired today in private news channels. Nostalgia is double-edged. For the nation’s peripheries, Dilli was Doordarshan, and vice-versa, till regional channels emerged. It was the capital of popular imagination.

The best filmmakers and actors from NFDC , did not make us feel like complaining about the predominance of HIndi. The best argument for a language can only come from its art and literature.

M​a​​nash Firaq Bhattacharjee is the author of Looking for the Nation: Towards Another Idea of India, published by Speaking Tiger Books (August 2018).