Those were the days of my childhood. We did not have a VCP player. What we had was a Black and White 14" Dyanora TV that was just good enough to see the daily Doordarshan serials. No Cable TV still. Those who had the VCP in our locality were richest, at least in my eyes. We used to throng to their houses to catch the latest movies (at least 2 months old).My favorite used to be the Indiana jones series, Jurassic Park, Robocop etc. Their houses were like theatres for us. We just waited for the next video cassette to be brought by them. It was not just the children but also the elders who would gather. For me, all this amounted to a festive like atmosphere.
Then it was the time of cable TV. The traditional cable TV operators (unlike today’s operators) used to broadcast 2 movies every day. If one movie came in the afternoon then the other one was at night. Our Muslim neighbors had a huge magnifying glass which would make a 14" screen of a TV look like a 32" screen. It had become a sort of a ritual visiting their homes at all occasions. The cable TV had become a means of uniting people from different religions. It had helped us in making many as our family friends.
The mid 90s marked the existence of Star TV which was an instant rage. This is when we upgraded our TV to a color 20" BPL along with the Star TV connection. Our comforts of home had brought everything within our reach. The gap between people that were bridged by VCP and the traditional Cable TV was broken at once. Almost every home had upgraded to Star TV and hence the need to go elsewhere was not required. The traditional Cable TV metamorphosed into broadcasting several channels apart from the STAR TV instead of movies. Even the brick like black colored video cassettes had slimmed into spherical CDs and DVDs. The shops that rented out VCDs morphed into renting CDs and DVDs. Since then it has not changed for a while.
Of late I am sensing seeds of change again. My locality used to be a hub for several CD shops. Almost every weekend I used to bring several latest movie CDs so that our family could enjoy sitting together without the nuisance of any advertisements. Now all those shops have either closed or shifted gears to some other chain of stores. Only one or two remain. Even those have either rented out half of its space to accommodate a sweet shop or on the edge of closing it. That’s clearly is a sign of extinction.
Probably the decline started with the advent of Internet and other data transferring technologies like Blue Tooth. Though used sporadically in its initial days, now Internet is slowly becoming as common as Cable connections - Even the Net cafes might be out of vogue very soon -. Almost all the latest movies can be caught in one website or the other. The competition of the various channels also has not done any good to the future of CD shops. Within weeks of release some or the other channel would broadcast a latest movie.
For better or for worse, One Technology has either given birth to a new technology or gobbled up another Technology. All we can do is only use the latest till it gets older and get used to using another till it leads to a new one. Its never good to get stuck with one Technology as thats when we as a generation will get outdated.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
The Time Warp
Why do our parents think that they know everything? (They keep advising us) Why do they despise all that which may not match with their biases? (They think the previous gens were more intelligent) Or they stuck in a Time Warp?
Those were the days of landlines and Telephone booths. I still remember the time when I had to stand in a line (1.25 rupees in my hand, because thats what costed per call) in front of a booth just for a chance to speak to my friend over phone. It all has changed just in a span of 10 years with the advent of small wireless devices called cell phones. When I had bought it for the first time I thought that it might be of no use to me as I was not as social. I am sure many people would have felt the same way. Now when I look back, I know, that statement doesnt hold good anymore.
Our generation has now been sorrounded by these so called different kinds of gizmos and gadgets. We will not be able to visualize our lives otherwise. I am sure if cell phones were to be banned (Like prohibition towards drinking) today then we might even be prepared to smuggle them just to have a look at it. A cell phone has become an identity and an extension of our physical self that we might feel handicapped with out it. There was a time when I used to write, re-write on scores of papers to get my poetry right. Finally when I got it right I might have used atleast 20 papers of manuscript with numerous permutations and combinations of sentences underlined, scratched, written over and over again. Now laptops, desktops and very recently ITabs and Iphones with the facilities of MS-office have made all the editing more easier.
Now leave alone coexisting with these devices they have become our world. Our parents never had to put up with these things. So they really dont understand the state of today's generation. This has been the reason enough for our parents to always went their anger at us. When I am in my room doing something on my laptop they would just come up and yell at me not to waste time. They would rather be happy seeing me reading my text books. Now hold on!! I might just be doing the same thing in my E-Library. Why should they assume that I would be wasting my time playing only games on it? (I was infact doing the same thing) But why should they assume that instantly?
What used to be a source of knowledge at their time may not be anymore. To find a piece of information during their times would have taken a lot of (not at all worth it) effort from going to a library, searching scores of shelves, looking through various paper back editions and finally getting to what they wanted. But now you can just type it in google and you get it with the least effort. The problem with our elders is that they are still stuck in a time warp. They still can't realize the fact that the time of Rafis and Kishores are gone and the time of pritams and Rahamans are here irrespective of their liking. They should learn to respect the ideas of every generation and keep abreast with the updates. During their times the interaction with external world was minimal. That was best suited at that point of time. Today's world is made up of Facebooks and Twitters. They are so embeded into our systems that we cannot have any identity without them. If you cant understand a new thing atleast you should'nt despise it. The best thing that one can do is to keep the mind open and abserve and absorb the changes.
I hope that we can remain as broad minded as possible when we age. The next generation kids already speak the language of CDs and XBOX games. But those changes are inevitable with every surge of new generation. We just have to realize that this is the nature of ever-changing volatile world.
Those were the days of landlines and Telephone booths. I still remember the time when I had to stand in a line (1.25 rupees in my hand, because thats what costed per call) in front of a booth just for a chance to speak to my friend over phone. It all has changed just in a span of 10 years with the advent of small wireless devices called cell phones. When I had bought it for the first time I thought that it might be of no use to me as I was not as social. I am sure many people would have felt the same way. Now when I look back, I know, that statement doesnt hold good anymore.
Our generation has now been sorrounded by these so called different kinds of gizmos and gadgets. We will not be able to visualize our lives otherwise. I am sure if cell phones were to be banned (Like prohibition towards drinking) today then we might even be prepared to smuggle them just to have a look at it. A cell phone has become an identity and an extension of our physical self that we might feel handicapped with out it. There was a time when I used to write, re-write on scores of papers to get my poetry right. Finally when I got it right I might have used atleast 20 papers of manuscript with numerous permutations and combinations of sentences underlined, scratched, written over and over again. Now laptops, desktops and very recently ITabs and Iphones with the facilities of MS-office have made all the editing more easier.
Now leave alone coexisting with these devices they have become our world. Our parents never had to put up with these things. So they really dont understand the state of today's generation. This has been the reason enough for our parents to always went their anger at us. When I am in my room doing something on my laptop they would just come up and yell at me not to waste time. They would rather be happy seeing me reading my text books. Now hold on!! I might just be doing the same thing in my E-Library. Why should they assume that I would be wasting my time playing only games on it? (I was infact doing the same thing) But why should they assume that instantly?
What used to be a source of knowledge at their time may not be anymore. To find a piece of information during their times would have taken a lot of (not at all worth it) effort from going to a library, searching scores of shelves, looking through various paper back editions and finally getting to what they wanted. But now you can just type it in google and you get it with the least effort. The problem with our elders is that they are still stuck in a time warp. They still can't realize the fact that the time of Rafis and Kishores are gone and the time of pritams and Rahamans are here irrespective of their liking. They should learn to respect the ideas of every generation and keep abreast with the updates. During their times the interaction with external world was minimal. That was best suited at that point of time. Today's world is made up of Facebooks and Twitters. They are so embeded into our systems that we cannot have any identity without them. If you cant understand a new thing atleast you should'nt despise it. The best thing that one can do is to keep the mind open and abserve and absorb the changes.
I hope that we can remain as broad minded as possible when we age. The next generation kids already speak the language of CDs and XBOX games. But those changes are inevitable with every surge of new generation. We just have to realize that this is the nature of ever-changing volatile world.
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