The Lotus Eating

The television was never a revered thing in my family. It was actually a shining quintessence of hypocrisy. Back from our bloated Onida television days, I was always told that TV was a bad thing. Although the rest of the family had excused themselves to watch it at their own whim; I could only watch it at designated hours. My mother saw to it that I also saw designated channels. Fresh from the heydays of Doordarshan and a weather-beaten Prannoy Roy covering news in the World This Week program, India had forayed into the era of twenty cable channels. Including Discovery Channel. Deer running around. Lions roaring. Close-ups of pollen grains sticking to bees. A space shuttle with a small American flag on the side floating in the dark universe. Some westerner in beach clothes buying oranges from a smelly vegetable market in some forlorn Asian country. All these, my mother thought were integral in conjuring up the grand quizmaster of a child that she intended to rear. The less ambitious child however was drawn to the more banal, trite and materialistic pleasures of Cartoon Network that clearly had a narration style less monotonous than that of Discovery Channel; and save some lame competition from Doordarshan, had an absolute monopoly over animated characters on erstwhile television. Conflict, I’ve come to learn has always been a constant feature of my life and ultimately it was a question of giving into Cartoon Network, but also show some flickering loyalty towards Discovery Channel. So whenever my mother would turn back to the kitchen...flick...the hapless deer in the jaws of the lion would be replaced by Scooby Doo howling Scooby Dooby Doooooo. Ofcourse, the operation was less than perfect, and very often my mother would notice me flicking from cartoons back to the now almost finished deer and yawning lion, the moment she would enter the living room. “I know what you were watching” she would say in a tone heavy with reproach; not knowing that cartoons would most probably figure as the least controversial in the long list of reproachable things that her guarded son would grow up watching hidden from her sight.

Still she did manage to look the other side; occasionally give me the moral jab if she felt that my homework was being neglected. By the time I reached the penultimate years of my school life; soap serials blitzkrieged on the unassuming, emotionally unbalanced, excitement-starved Indian housewife. The revolution brought about by Balaji Telefilms soon engulfed women of all ages and social strata; and with them their husbands. I still remember the day the chocolate boy favourite protagonist, Mihir was made to die in a freak accident, and all of India maintained a day of national mourning. Which I should mention, also included our then housemaid who discussed with great lament with my mother, the futility of it all. Soon he was made to come back to life miraculously and the audience clapped, sighed and lapped it all up in one avaricious slurp.

The maelstrom hadn’t spared me. As usual, a serial of two mascara laden women spitting venom at each other was hardly the kind of upbringing my parents had envisaged for their strapping son. But unfortunately for them, my grandmother would watch these serials fascinated, and I could easily sneak up behind her lying on the floor to catch the show in between my studies. So much was I entwined with the plot and the characters, that whenever the orchestra would rise in announcement of a confrontation; I would rush from my study room to the living room to catch a glimpse of the action!

Parents grow up to become ace lawyers. They perfect the art of quoting obscure, forgotten chapters from your life in an effort to embellish their scolding. My weight today is still criticized in reference to karate classes they enrolled me in when I was maybe ten years old. Not surprisingly; my supposedly clandestine trips to the make-believe world of Balaji Telefilms also came under eloquent coverage whenever test scores looked bad; or answers were not memorised to punctuation perfection or the teacher had something disappointing to say about me.

The proverbial dam essentially broke with the conclusion of my academic life and the start of the professional one. With the looming spectre of exams and homework and revision and cramming formulae and understanding problem sets...all reduced to folklore; there was for a change nothing to stop me from watching television. The pent-up demand that was till now crudely obscured under rules and norms and discipline, gave an orgiastic leap towards the seductively undressed, enticing mistress of a television. I watched like a man possessed. The local cable man, who would come with a yellow piece of cardboard record every month to collect cable TV fees, was now replaced by set-top boxes. And what more; there was even a button on the remote to get a short synopsis of the program or the film that was going on, or what was scheduled to come up.

I would sit perched on my parents’ bed, still wearing that stinky vest I opted for in the morning and immediately dial 341 on the remote. The recently acquired 42 inch flat television(dhamaka Diwali Exchange Offer only at EZone!) told me that I was right in time for the nine-o-clock movie on Star Movies. Then I would visit HBO, followed by Zee Studio, WB and UTV World movies. Weigh my options. Followed by a quick reconnaissance of what was happening on Star World, Zee Cafe, BBC entertainment and FX. In synopsis, I had transformed into an English television addict. I started finding out dirty secrets of these channels. About how once any of the channels got hold of a decently popular movie, they would endlessly repeat it across clocks and days. Your Saturday night movies would be reinstated in the Sunday morning schedule. The much advertised Sunday movie blockbuster, premier in the evening that you would rather die than miss would be playing without the hype and celebration across weekdays. Independence Day celebrations played the Steven Spielberg Avataar with such violent bout of diarrhoea that I’ve lost all interest in the problems of the Navi tribe to last me for a lifetime. I realised that the censor board in English television was actually a more draconian version of its counterpart in movie theatres. For instance, Basic Instinct received such brutal censoring that they ended up editing the story too and ultimately in an effort to erase out the explicit scenes, irrevocably confused the plotline. In Indian television, Bond prefers to have sex behind closed doors and Austin Powers only likes staring at bikinied girls; not necessarily doing anything with them.

English channels in India for some reason carry with them English subtitles. I noticed that I started reading from them meticulously; so much so that I could tell when the guys in the Indian studio had missed out on parts of the dialogue being mouthed by the character. **** on the subtitle would be accompanied by a censorious beep in the dialogue and you had to carefully study the actor’s mouth to figure out if he or she started off with a ‘f’ or a ‘b’. However the poor censor board would often be at its wits end as to how to tackle dialogues like, “I am going to wipe my shit on your face” or “I will screw you in the ass”. So the subtitle is often something blessed and haloed like, “I will cause you a lot of pain”! And whenever somebody says, "Oh, I thought you were gay"; the subtitle reads "Oh I thought you weren't straight". Censorship plus subtitling - deadly combination!

I had reached a stage where I could tell the season of Friends or How I Met Your Mother or Scrubs or Simpsons, just by a single glance of the scene. I realised that I liked to watch repeated episodes of them, even though I knew what was coming next. When I was a child, one of my elder friends had told me how every time you watch an episode of Friends, you discover something new that you missed previously. Bit like unearthing the aura of Mona Lisa. I could now appreciate the depth of his statement.

“Its twenty six running”. “Nooo...I am twenty five, yaar”! I corrected my friend, irritated that he had increased my age by one. The truth of the matter was that I felt like time was fleeing by. I was seated in a coffee shop in a mall at 10:30 on a Sunday morning. I was actually in the mall since around ten. It had a peculiar moist warmness inside it with the air conditioning still not switched on, rendering a distinct greenhouse discomfort. I found myself in the scurried company of uniformed shop assistants all disappearing rapidly in unknown nooks and crevices of the mall en-route to behind the counter before the shutters opened. It was a Sunday morning when I didn’t know what to do, apart from most definitely getting out of home. The emptiness in the mall, I hadn’t anticipated. Thankfully the Cafe Coffee Day franchise decided to take a head start in matters of opening shop, and I thought it would be really European and bohemian to be solitarily sipping a froth-embroiled Cappuccino in a coffee shop till my friend was meant to join me.

My parents had become older; although somehow they always looked constant-aged to me. Now they nagged less about specific failures and had a more generalised context to it. “So, are you going out with her today?” my mother asked caustically while I was flipping through the channels. “And which ‘her’ are you talking about?” I shot back not taking my eyes from the screen. “What exactly is the matter with you?” I asked. “Do you have a problem if I go out with a girl? Is that what this is all about?” My mother retreated into the bathroom. A minute later she emerged out, “I don’t know what the problem is. You are lying here the entire day watching movies...some friend calls you any time of the day and you just leave...you eat out every second day and come back late at night. Staying at home means for you, watching television. The wall in the living room has been leaking. Have you done anything about it? I am hearing for over a month that you need to have the computer repaired. On Independence Day you didn’t even go down to the flag hoisting ceremony. Kulkarni uncle was asking why you hadn’t come.” “Kulkarni uncle!” I looked at her surprised. “What on earth is his problem with me?” “Look at you...” my mother screamed at my insolence. “For heaven’s sake there is a revolution happening there with young people like you participating in Anna Hazare’s protests.” she said pointing her hand towards the TV. “Even the Lokpal Bill got passed! And look at you...still watching Star Movies, eating out and doing nothing. How much potential you had...” she stormed out of the room.

Sipping coffee all by myself in that empty mall, I was wondering whatever had happened. Had the Roman Empire indeed fallen into hedonistic decadence? Life had become a shuttlecock between office and home. I remembered how some junior had once asked me how I selected my career and job. Inspite of my rattling verbosity before the impressed junior; I knew deep inside that it could be the other way round – my career chose me; and I on my part chose to simply drift in the direction where the wind was favourable. Between a gruelling schedule at office and the 42 inch mistress television at home, I felt like a ship that was going nowhere and was just trying to keep itself afloat on choppy waters. Life that was so meticulously planned and guided through exams, expectations, a fattening certificates file, and poetically cooing resumes...suddenly was finding itself sans coordinates.

Was I coming to realise that some things were just not meant to happen in my life ever? Like being a singer or actor maybe? Flying a small plane for pleasure. Or having bulging muscles, contributing to a picturesque scene in say a rock climbing expedition? What about the changing-the-country dream that emanated from endless debates where I furiously waved my hands in school and college days? The hypothetical next woo-the-world face? Maybe there was a world out there. A world full of potential. May be off the conventional route that I was treading now. So why wasn’t I going there? Was I simply scared? Scared of thinking big? Scared to get out of my protected, insured world? Scared to imagine what kind of wheels I could possibly set in motion? Scared to make it large?

And was it all this fear that was making me hide behind the television? Where I did not need to do a single thing apart from command the remote and watch characters prance on the screen; numbing any other aspiration, fear, emotion...like a drug? Would the television and its endless tirade of episodes and movies be finally converting me into that overweight uncle who in parties would be regaling kids around him as to how he too had once collected a lot of trophies, crooned a lot of songs, had a distinct sex appeal and was earmarked for bigger things. After the party he would ruefully tell himself on the drive back home that at fifty, all of it seemed so arrogantly wasted, and it was time to admit that it was too late. Would I be looking at a bright eyed, intelligent looking boy in the group and telling to him in my mind, “Please do not do the same mistakes I ended up doing.”

Midway between Jason Bourne’s confrontation with his contract killer hired by the CIA; I switched off the television. The television snapped off in a flash, as if confused at this abrupt unscheduled stop. In Greek mythology, Odysseus and his men had come across the land of lotus-eaters where the inhabitants would eat lotuses and be in an eternally drugged, indolent state; happy and content munching lotuses. The lotus eating had to stop. I dragged my laptop out of the bag. It was time to write.