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I was watching the second run of Karamchand on Sony a few weeks back, and started wondering about the other detective serials that we see. There is the strange CID, but my memories went back to that serial from long ago, Byomkesh Bakshi. It brought back a lot of nostalgia. The year was 1993, and satellite channels were just picking up. Doordarshan was still watched by a number of people, and here comes this non-flashy detective serial, starring Rajit Kapur. The director was Basu Chaterjee, which was another plus point about the serial.

The series was based on a detective created in 1932, by the Bengali author Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. The detective was picturized in a film (Chiriyakhana or The Zoo) by Satyajit Ray, starring Uttam Kumar in 1967, and the movie is typically known as one of Satyajit Ray’s not so better movies. And then came this series, and the series was what made the character of Byomkesh Bakshi famous.

Continue reading ‘Doordarshan Nostalgia: Byomkesh Bakshi‘

I am slowly going into nostalgia mode, and may evoke some memories in people who were kids when Doordarshan was the single channel on TV, and when there was a serial called ‘Giant Robot’ that would come on TV. Nowadays, there are such a lot of cartoon channels, but at that time, there was this show among the few that would be coming on TV which was of interest specifically to children (along with Spiderman, and a few others). From what I recall, it used to come in the late afternoon. This is actually a very old serial, which was created in Japan in the late 60′s, became a craze in the US in the 70′s and then was recycled here in India by Doordarshan in the 80′s. But all this does not matter really, nobody cares whether this was recycled or not. There was the thrill of watching it, and it used to get tense when you had to go somewhere (parental pressure or something else unavoidable), and how am I going to be able to miss this episode, and wait for the next episode ?

Continue reading ‘Nostalgia: ‘Giant Robot’ Great Serial For Kids’

Imagine the surprise, I change channels around 8:30 on the morning, and on Star Gold (I think, not fully sure about the channel) I see a serial long lost from memory. The familiar figures of Satish Shah, Swaroop Sampat and Rakesh Bedi on screen, and the serial looking old. This has to be .. ‘Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi’. I watched the whole episode with rapt attention, it was about Renu (Swaroop) and Raja (Rakesh Bedi) trying to get some money to pay insurance premium for Renu’s husband Ranjit (the late Shafi Inamdar) who is out on some business trip. They rent out a room to Satish Shah and then an aunt Farida Jalal came along. To tell the truth, I did not laugh as much as I used to when originally watching the serial (a long long time back), but I still found it funny.

The serial brought out a fair amount of nostalgia. This serial used to come on Doordarshan a long time back (starting in 1985) and used to be very popular. Doordarshan at that time used to only start making some sense around 7 PM (starting with Krishi Darshan, which I don’t know anyone watching) and then would have some serials and of course Chitrahaar (one day of the week initially). Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi was one of the more popular ones.

Continue reading ‘Anybody remember ‘Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi’ ?’

Many years ago, when Doordarshan was the only channel and there was no competition on the entertainment front, India would stay glued to whatever was dished out from Mandi House. A lot of serials from that time were quite popular. One of them was "Malgudi Days". I would hate my tuition teacher for keeping the classes which extended beyond 9:00 PM. That was the time of the prime serials.

I would miss all episodes of Malgudi days and Fauji, two of the most popular serials of all times. Now I get to watch Malgudi Days online on Rajshri.com. The most favorite character in Malgudi Days was obviously Swamy. Master Manjunath played the role of Swamy in the serial. Come to think of it, Swamy had only 9 episodes in the three seasons (39 Episodes) of MD and yet the popularity it achieved was phenomenal. Many characters had etched in the minds of the viewers. Set in a small village, the antics of Swamy were a familiar event for us. We had gone through those situations, at least most of them.

Continue reading ‘Would Swamy Survive Today?’

I was just reminiscing of serials from an earlier age, when Doordarshan was the only channel available, and we used to wait for our favourite serials to appear on TV. In the current age of a massive number of family dramas and saas-bahu serials, and my favourite type (joke, I don’t really like them), 2 mega-rich families colliding with each other, I remember a serial from an earlier age.

I am talking about a serial called Khaandan. It starred a number of characters such as Neena Gupta, Dr. Shreeram Lagoo, Mohan Bhandari, Jayant Kriplani, and so on. I wonder how many people remember this serial, but I was an avid watcher when it came. Of course, this must have been 20 years back now, and I have never seen a re-run of this serial, so the memory is a bit foggy.

Continue reading ‘An Excellent Serial From Historical Times: Khandaan‘