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Come, sit across and let’s talk,
Of Friday evenings,
Flush with songs, news and late-night dramas,
Of muted TV sets and soiled pajamas,

For I have another story
(warning: bad pun ahead)
To squirt.

Ok, confession time. How many evenings of your life have followed this pattern on Fridays – watch the title song of ‘Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya” (the Dharam Paaji version) at around 8.25 PM, listen to the rhythms of Loy Mendonsa’s tabla circa 10 PM and climax late night in front of the television on mute? Those, who are wondering about the state of my mental health based on the above clues, please read on to see the light. Others, whose answer is way above the biblical ‘four score and ten’ (clearly, a life well spent), would have instantly understood what the above lines meant; so, welcome to the exclusive club of “Shukr hai Shukrwaar hai” (an alliterative tagline, originally Indian, which was stolen by an MNC fast food chain).

These days I am weighed down worrying about the legacy we are leaving behind for the generations to come – global warming, depleted natural resources, Rakhi Sawant, karva-chauth news on Aaj-Tak and Deepak Tijori’s movies. Troubling as these thoughts are, my biggest concern, however, props elsewhere – the kind of entertainment the current generation receives on Friday evening. For as I will explain here, the bedrock of India’s current economic growth (powered by the demographic group 30-40 years of age) was built on the quality Friday evening entertainment dished out by National Television between mid 80s and early 90s.

Friday evening entertainment in those days started off at 7.30 PM with a seminal genre-defining program called Krishi Darshan. While the average viewer would literally translate the title to mean “a view of farm/farming”, I realized over a period of time that the “Darshan” really meant philosophy as in “Darshan Shastra”. This led to me discovering deeper meaning of life at a fairly early age. When Professor Sharma (from Agriculture University, Hisar) cautioned the “krishak bhai” about deleterious effects of keede (weevil) on dhaan (paddy) where it eats away the anaaj (kernel) leaving just the husk behind, I learnt a fundamental truth which others learnt only last weekend – aatma hai to sharir ishwar hai, warna nashwar hai (please continue reading, that’s the only indirect reference to NS on this post). Krishi Darshan, while imbuing my soul with such spiritual enrichment, also dispensed with practical wisdom like how to take care of gwal-bel ki khuraak (nourishment of livestock). Important tips which have helped a lot of us manage human resources in large firms quite well later in life.

As Krishi Darshan ended, an electronic timepiece flashing on the screen would countdown to 8 PM and a message written on perforated cardboard would appear either announcing ‘Over To National Network’ or “Rukawat Ke Liye Khed Hai” (Sorry For The Interruption). This signaled the start of Friday evening Chitrahaar – the less flashy country cousin of the Wednesday version. One of my great unfulfilled desires in life is to meet the person who decided on the songs that should be played in this program. He single-handedly (without Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market) made some songs into anthems. And he had some fairly clear ideas on song placements and positioning. For instance, the title songs of ‘Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya’ or ‘Jheel Ke Us Paar’ would necessarily be the first song whenever they played. These are fascinating songs which stoked many a young imaginations because of the way the came alive on screen.

Let me deconstruct ‘Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya’ first. The song has Nutan, Dharmendra and Rahman ensconced in a boat in the middle of a lake. Clearly, this was as triangular as any love story could get. Dharmendra/Rafi starts with “Dil ne phir yaad kiya barf si lahar aayi hai, phir koi chot mohabbat ki ubhar aayi hai.” Ok, I got the picture, some ‘puraana chot’ has been revived for the poor guy which is not entirely implausible for he seems to be doing the bulk of rowing (tennis elbow, perhaps). Nutan/Suman Kalyanpur then joins the party with “kya bataayen tumhe hum ki kismet kya hai” playing out the possibilities of some deep misunderstanding and cruel hand that fate dealt which forced her to suppress the truth in the past. And finally, Rahman joins in with Mukesh as the playback, “hum woh parwaane hain….. husn ki aag mein khamosh jalaa karte hain”. So, this guy’s got the girl but he still seems to be burning like a moth in the flame of ‘husn’. Pity! Ok, I got it all nailed. However, some questions remained. Why did these three decide on this boating revelry if they carried such deep secrets? Had Dharmendra become a boatman after his heartbreak since he seemed to be doing the rowing routine almost professionally? Why was Rahman ‘jalaoing in khamoshi’ when in the past I had seen him involved in acts of baser skullduggery?

“Jheel Ke Us Paar” title track also intrigued me. Firstly, I had seen “paaket books” with the same title written by Gulshan Nanda and I wondered which came first. And then the title track showed a blind Mumtaz leading Dharmendra down the literal garden path mist, dhuaan et al. But you get the whole picture when she intones “mil jaaye bhagwan mujhko aadmi ke roop mein” and the camera lingers on the “Greek Bhagwan” Dharmendra.

The two tracks which most frequently closed Chitrahaar (brutally cut short by Hindi news at 8.30 PM with Salma Sultan and J.V. Raman talking about another TV Transmission Tower inaugurated by the PM in Andhra Pradesh) were “Aadmi Musafir Hai” from Apnapan where Sudhir Dalvi (aka Sirdi ke Sai Baba) dispenses worldly wisdom in a bus while Jeetendra and Reena Roy are surprisingly (forcibly perhaps) restrained on their seat and “Zindagi ke safar mein” from Aap Ki Kasam with Rajesh Khanna philosophizing on what went wrong. J Om Prakash had possibly bought the last song slot from DD.

The next big event was at 10 PM with Loy Mendonsa’s tabla heralding the start of The World This Week by Prannoy Roy. This was an important departure from news as we knew it. News till then meant a series of clips showing Pradhan Mantri in various parts of the country wearing the local headgear and exhorting the nation with ‘hume dekhna hai, humne dekha hai, hum dekhenge, humko dekhna chahiye’, followed by weather where we would know which parts of the country will receive garaj waale baadal and boonda-baandi. The World This Week changed all that with news from all over the world delivered with a finesse hardly seen till then. And, yes, the 1 minute clip that they played of international rock scene was good enough for us to know that Scorpions played ‘Winds of Change’ to commemorate the fall of Berlin Wall.

And then arrived the pièce de résistance of the Friday evening, the late night film. This was most educational; cinematically, the ability to follow a script with the TV on mute, the discerning of deeper nuances of acting by studying the body language of actors, or more practically, learning about the human anatomy and the ability to turn off the television at the slightest noise. The number of studious and conscientious teenagers shot up dramatically on Fridays evenings. They pored over text on one hand and on the other (to use a figurative term) understood cinema in its purest form (without sound). A generation of youth growing up dealing with words and images!! The impact is for the world to see 20 years later as India dominates the world in “soft” power. So, I watched a mix of junk and classic with no idea of separating the two - ‘She will be wearing pink pyjamas’ (a film with an enticing title and nothing more to recommend itself to a teenager), Fraternity Vacation (a film with a lot to recommend and for long, the word fraternity conjured up images for me whose intimacy quotient was way higher than the literal meaning of the word), Mandi (what the hell, why are they showing a Hindi movie in this slot) or Lawrence of Arabia (will this movie ever end?). At the end of it all, the announcer would show up and inform “isi ke saath aaj ki yeh sabha yahin samapt hoti hai, agli sabha mein phir mulakat hogi, tab tak ke liye aagyaa dijiye”, a most civil way of closing the evening.

Let’s pause a bit and summarize this Friday evening – we learnt philosophy and HR in Krishi Darshan, we were entertained, our creative juices flowed in figuring the plot while watching Chitrahaar, we were educated about the world by Prannoy Roy and company and then we let some hormones go wild while watching the late night movie fare.

This is what Taran Adarsh meant when he famously wrote what he wanted from his Friday evenings – educate, entertain and finally elevate.

I am worried about the future generations when I see what we have to offer them these days on Friday evenings. The choice seems to be between sending text messages signaling your preference for dancers, singers, bathroom singers or stand-up comics. The entertainment’s cheap and there’s neither education nor elevation. While this doesn’t keep me up in the nights, it does worry me. Where we once had a tight-fisted grasp on our destiny, this generation’s content using only their digits. Hmm, I have seen tomorrow and it doesn’t work.

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