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| Catch the real action? Don’t worry, turn on to Door Darshan | | | Krish Ashok
The Olympics have come to an end, and thanks to Doordarshan, I’ve seen lots of nothing. On a scale that measures sucking power, Doordarshan would be way ahead of leeches, industrial vacuum cleaners, tornadoes and yes, even black holes. Talking of black holes, doesn’t the DD logo look rather like one?
Had one Stephen Hawking watched DD’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics, he would have immediately deduced that all meaningful live action was inside the DD blackhole’s event horizon, the boundary that defines the point of no return for a black hole.
Hyperbole aside, how bad was it really?
Legend (or quizzing trivia) has it that the Yogic Siddhi that provides the practitioner with the power to see distances from. The power that Sanjaya used to report on the Kurukshetra war to Dhritarashtra, was called “Door Darshan”. It looks like a couple of millenia later, the power has waned a bit. I was like Dhritarashtra, sitting in Chennai, blind to the incredible action going on at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, and I was entirely relying on the power of Doordarshan for my daily Olympic fix. Everyday for the last three weeks, I would come back home from work, and say.
Dhritarashtra Uvaacha (said): O Sun O Jaya, take your soaps and go away. Come hither, Beijing! What bloody wars are the track and field athletes fighting right now?
Doordarshan Uvaacha: Patience O Blind king, let me first tell you about Micheal Phelps and his eight gold medals, and why he is the “Complete Man”, and if only he did not spend six hours a day in the pool, he would be wearing Raymond suits.
Dhritarashtra Uvaacha: Ah fie upon my lifeless eyes! Has the Michael not returned to Sea World, back to his tank last week? Tell me something new, O Far seer. Tell me about the 4 x 400m. Can the Reggae dancers outwit the Stars and Stripes here too?
Doordarshan Uvaacha: In good time O Husband of the Lady from Kandahar. Let me first show you slow motion clips of Vijender’s bouts set to music from Lagaan.
Dhritarashtra Uvaacha: Aaaah come closer so I can hug you. The real action is in the Bird’s Nest, and yet you continue to waste my time with retrospectives. Couldn’t that wait till after the games are over?
Doordarshan Uvaacha: Your wish, O blind king. Live action it is. Here is a full 70 minutes of the bronze medal Hockey match between Australia and Netherlands. And the medal ceremonies of all the Boxing finals. And ah, boxing reminds me — here’s Vijender in slow motion again, set to music from Lagaan. And after that, 30 minutes of the crack DD sports commentary team talking you through what’s happening right now.
Dhritarahtra Uvaacha: Gaandhaari. Please open your eyes just for a bit, will you, and burn to ashes this Far seer. Oh Youtube, do you have anything useful to report on the games?
Youtube Uvaacha: Damnation O blind king! NBC keeps deleting all my videos related to the Olympics.
Dhritarashtra Uvaacha: Fie upon you, Ambika. Why did you get scared of Vyaasa? Sigh. Doordarshan, leave live action alone. Show me at least the highlights of the day after the
sun sets.
Doordarshan Uvaacha: Certainly O blind king. Here are yesterday’s highlights, today.
Dhritarashtra Uvaacha: (Unprintable curses in Sanskrit)
And if this wasn’t enough, both BBC and CNN let me know politely that video clips were not available outside of their countries. That’ it. I’m off to London in 2012 to watch the next Olympics live. |
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