My Digi Cable was out. Therefore, I had no American-English channels to watch. I was detached from my existence, vacuumed by the monster discreetly named depression, sitting in a dark room in despair after flipping through some local channels, those which are what I can call ….umm…foreign-NIZED music , drama and fashion channels these days. And I had no way out.
As I closed my eyes instead of giving the table in front of me a bolt of head bang, I remembered the days when we were entertained by THE only TV channel, PTV the great, which by the way succeeded in mesmerizing the nation in that tiny frame of time, as tiny as only six hours a day. (Yes, chronologically, I am that old). What blissful days of joy and sheer excitement, waiting eighteen hours to see the glass of television screen ornamented by the incredible works of writers, directors, producers, carefully picked cartoons, documentaries, movies etc etc etc. and getting amused till the time of Qaumi Tarana. But then mercy bounced back, it coughed and spat phlegm on us a channel called STN. Ah, I wish we knew what we would be bearing for years ahead…..EYE TORTURE! But of course, we got excited to have another channel after been envious for years of comparing us with other countries that offered numerous TV channels. Same excitement must have been felt by Egyptian civilization in history when they got their first wheel from Mohenjodaro after long laborious job they did to make pyramids. Envious they had been just like us.
Swish Swish! Flashbacks jolted. It seemed like slow ride in a time machine. In eighteen years, the entertainers have come far from sanity to insanity. Humour by Anwar Maqsood, Shaoib Hashmi and Mustansir Hussain Tarar has been replaced or rather swept by uncountable humour-less writers who in real actually spit words which they find wandering around in their tiny brains and get no place to settle. Moin Akhtar’s image is sufficiently distorted by the young crowd of VJs and hosts/hostesses, the dwellers of Disturbia. I can bet that they find themselves very funny when they brush their hair in front of the mirror but definitely have no angle through which they understand that how successfully they are making fools out of themselves. Well, why should I bother, at least they are being fools successfully. I’ll leave the actors and singers to your own imagination. Surely, my words would not do much justice.
I guess that talented crowd from the past did not die of age but of swift strokes given by this new generation that showed relentless performances. All is now left to the ministry of media and entertainment (if there is any) to make sure that every local TV channel provides anti-depressants, mood stabilizers and energy boosters to the entire population (of sensible people) who sins to watch these brain-paralyzing-channels. I don’t know about others but I surely need some.
Well, I am not being vindictive here. I’ll be dissecting my own self next. It should be equally just for all and I am no exception. (Finally, I opened my eyes….phew.., what a quick ride!)
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