The World in Silent Mode...

One of my favourite past-time used to be watching TV in silent mode.  It always transfixed me to see situations unfurl silently and to let the world pass-by without sound.  It is like a dream –it can be nightmarish but mostly harmless.

But these days, I hardly have time to indulge in that favourite past-time of mine.  I have been busy, especially this past week when I got an additional job as an attendant to a sick nephew who was hospitalized.

Last night, I somehow managed some time, so I curled up in the couch and switched on the TV and turned off the sound.  I was an old habit to start browsing the channels starting from the news networks, then move to sports, movies until I stopped at one of the cartoon networks.  Last night was no different. 

The first news network had a commercial running.  There was a man who looked tense and paced up and down the corridor of a building that looked like a hospital.  Then a nurse appeared with a baby which she handed to the man.  The man looked very relieved.  Then a nurse appeared again with a baby and handed to the man.  He looked happy.  Then another nurse appeared with a baby, the hand of the man was full, but he still looked happy.  The product was about insurance from a banking firm.

The next was a Hindi news network and had ‘breaking news’ in big bold letter with big pictures of leopard splashed in the wide screen behind the anchor.  After the anchor babbled for sometime, the camera took me to a big well wherein inside fall a baby leopard.  The camera zoomed in and out with the leopard circled and continued on and on.  After zooming in and out for about 5 minutes, the villagers somehow lowered down a jute cot covered in white sheet.  The poor feline looked petrified and curled up at the corner where it stood.  Then appeared a man who managed to put a rope around the neck of the cat, lifted up (I thought it might choke) and put it on the cot.  The cot was lifted up to safety and the poor animal was shoved to the side.  I don’t know what happened next as the camera didn’t show me and the twitching face of the anchor came back to the screen.  But I can almost hear an applause coming, may be, from the neighbours’ TV.

That piece of ‘breaking news’ was followed by another section called ‘viewers alert’.  It was about an exposed electrical wires around a transmitter in Orissa.  There were some dead rats around.  I’m pretty sure the viewers get the message. And they also have prizes for the viewer who sent the video.  The prizes include jewellery and some other products which I could not figure out.

Then I moved to another Hindi news network and saw a mob beating up a teenager.  The poor boy seemed to be begging for mercy with folded hands while the men around him continued slapping him back and forth, turned around and smiled at the camera.  I moved to another news channel where a segment called ‘viewers alert’ started (not the previous one).  There was a breaded, beaded man in orange coloured shirt and from the image in his back drop, I figured out he must be an astrologer, so I moved.

There was commercial in one of the English news channel I often tuned in.  The commercial had a man and a woman, no, actually a person who is dressed as half-man and half-women.  The man half and the woman half were (was?) arguing.  I don’t know what their argument was about, or the product they endorsed, but it was highly amusing.

The next channel showed flood victims in a certain part of India.  Dead bodies of three cows and a woman were floating in the side of a bush.  I quickly pressed my remote.  There were commercial in most of the network so I continued moving.

Then I stopped at a channel that showed skinny girls with hardly any clothing, walking down the stage with respectable looking ladies and gentlemen watching from the side.  I’m certain I heard the clicking of their heels…

…click, click, clik

It was the alarm in my phone.  It was time to sleep or I won’t be able to wake-up in time for office tomorrow…