The complete guide to complete nonsense

“Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday and in most western nations, it is the sixth day of the week while in a traditional sense, it is the seventh day of the week.” Confusing? This is how the article on Saturday starts in Wikipedia. My body clock has no such confusions. Somehow it understands a Saturday whether it’s the sixth day or seventh day. I am wide awake by 6 A.M. whereas on a working day I am mostly wide awake only after I miss the shuttle.

What do you do on an early Saturday morning? Just do what normal people do - switch on the television. I can browse channels the whole day and this is exactly what I did on a Saturday. After browsing for a whole day, I have some findings to share with the world. The umpteen channels that are dished out today can be categorized as -

Soap Channels
My college used to give a month break once a year. Sometimes I see (or will be forced to see) some soap operas during the day. There was a certain serial where the guy was in jail, his wife was crying almost all the time for her husband’s release and his mother was praying continuously. It was a serial which was telecast daily and by the end of my one month break, nothing much had changed - the guy was still in jail, his wife was still crying almost all the time and his mother was still praying. The only change was that the guy’s father’s brother’s second son’s daughter somehow fell in love. I am sure that the serial must be still running and the guy will still be in jail thinking of his crying wife and praying mother. These channels specialize in such soaps where the story in the promo moves faster than the actual story itself.

News Channels
For a normal human being, Dhoni smiling or Deepika smiling or both of them smiling together does not really matter. But then, news telecasters are not normal human beings. They can make a one hour “Special” on these events and also manage to have an “Exclusive” interview with Shah Rukh Khan focusing on the romantic aspect of these events. In the meantime, there will be animation at the background with Dhoni on one side, Deepika on the other and hearts flying all over. We cannot blame the News channels - with so many of them around, they really have to fight hard to find “news” as only they can define it. If this is news, check this out for “breaking news” - Rakhee gets angry during a reality dance show.

Movie Channels
Most movie channels have the habit of promoting their next month’s agenda – “Coming up in December, see Jude Law in ‘I love Santa Claus’...” and usually the agenda will stop with 4 movies. You might believe that these 4 movies are just a preview and are part of a long list of movies they will be showing in December. But you are wrong. If you switch to the channel any time of the day, you will find only one of these 4 movies going on. The movies will be run, re-run, re-re-run and re-re-re-run and I am running out of “re”s. By the time December is over, you will be able to narrate the dialogues with ease and even tell the color of Jude Law’s underwear every time he changes to his Santa Claus costume.

Sports Channels
The only kind of channel which loves to show “Live” stuff. There is so much competition to show good live stuff that one media giant actually created its own League of Gentlemen to feed its sports channel. But mostly the only live stuff these channels get is golf. You don’t need a calculator to calculate the percentage of people in India who love to watch golf. Other channels just stick to their own once-upon-a-time-live stuff. Who wouldn’t love to watch Yuvi hit 6 sixes in a row - again and again. They use this craze to the maximum extent.

Documentary Channels
I usually do not think much during my flights. I just keep looking out of the window or read a book. The flight will be as uneventful as an Australia- England Test match. This was before I watched “Crash Investigations – ways in which a plane can be brought down” in one of the documentary channels. Now the only thing I am interested in during the journey from the “Departure” gate to the “Arrival” gate is my life. During the flight, even the smallest of jerks causes a panic attack. What happened? Did an engine fail? Is the right wing going left and the left wing going right? Is the pilot drunk? Are we in the middle of a super cyclone? Is there a hijacker on board? Several questions, but no answers. That’s what knowledge can do to you. Especially the knowledge these channels provide you.

Fashion Channels
I really don’t understand the purpose of these channels. I thought fashion is related to clothes and when you don’t have much of them, where is the fashion? I don’t understand. I think I am fashion unconscious.

I should mention here that there are really good channels in the above categories. But they are very few and so far away that my television is not able to show them. And I should also mention here that Jude Law did not act in “I love Santa Claus”.

Recently, a Saturday was blessed with a power failure. I saw more kids playing cricket on the by lanes. Entire families were sitting in the balcony and chit chatting. Youngsters started gathering around a juice stall and did everything except drinking juice. Grandpa, grandma, Chiki and Miki were all out shipping. The best thing to happen to a television is a power failure.