Every year on October 31, Americans delight in scaring themselves with the tricks and treats of Halloween. Children dress up as ghosts, goblins and witches. Adults hang images of skeletons and bats on their doors and windows. Spooky music drifts out of storefronts.

However in Australia they celebrate Guy Fawkes Eve as the day for Halloween or as it is also known Mischief Night or Danger Night.

On this night it is a day for children to create mischief by doing tricks or getting a treat. Though is not widely done in Australia as it is in America and elsewhere, but the trend seems to be picking up. In fact most children in Australia celebrate it as dance at their schools or in other activities. Not as a day to create lawless or other mischief.

This reminds of my very own first and sadly last Halloween party in Sydney, about three years ago. Me along with my two Ozzie flatmates aka Dave and Elliot, decided to celebrate Halloween in a big way that year, since it was also Elliot’s 30th Birthday on 29th October. Luckily Halloween was falling on the weekend….so we knew we could expect a big turn-out.

Click here to continue reading ‘Missing Halloween….’

Most TV programmes are nothing more than bad-parodies today, not dramas. They often display a high level of tension, frustration, and conflict within the family. Somehow. The norm is middle to upper middle, or high, class families that often live in plush homes in virtually interchangeable suburbs. On the other hand, it seems that the Indian Television is getting over obsessed with the “Reality” show concept. Every damn T.V channel has some talent hunt show going on, be it singing, acting, dancing, fashion….practically everything one can do under the sun. In short, it’s a monumental cultural wasteland on TV “a travesty of game shows, violence, sadism, murder, bad men, good men, private detectives, cartoons etc., and endless commercials” of screaming presenters, tacky shows, cajoling and offensive.

All the above, somehow forces me to miss the “idiot” box that existed before the arrival of “cable” network. Our national channel aka “Doordarshan”, was surprisingly not so ‘doooor’ from it’s viewers needs and sentiments in those days.

Some of the best T.V shows were aired on ‘DD1′ and ‘DD metro’ in the 80s till early 90s. Here is a look at some of them….

Tamas (1986) -

Director : Govind Nihalani

Main Leads : Om Puri, Deepa Sahi, Amrish Puri, Bhisham Sahni, A.K. Hangal, Manohar SinghDina Pathak and Saeed Jaffrey.

The serial is a story of partition in India, in the year 1947, which interweaves the lives of the young innocent people caught in the Hindu- Muslim and Sikh - Muslim tensions during partition. Based on the book written by Bhishma Sahani, it looks at how extremist elements of both communities infuse hatred in the communities, and finally how realisation dawns as to the futility of violence. It consisted of out-standing performance by all the actors and especially Om-Puri as ‘Nathu’ and Bhisham Sahni as ‘Karmo’.

A writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court, asking that Doordarshan be restrained from airing the show. The grounds for challenging the airing of the serial was that the serial was likely to promote disharmony and hatred on grounds of enmity, ill feeling among different religions and it was likely to train people to use criminal force or participate in criminal acts.

Wagle Ki Duniya (1988)

Director : Ravi Oja

Main Leads : Bharati Achrekar and Anjaan Srivastav.

‘Wagle Ki Duniya’ was based on charachters created by famous cartoonist R. K. Laxman. It was a marvelous entertainer, which, in some ways, embodied TV’s ubiquitous appeal over the language barrier. The concept was simple and clean, which only focused on the world of the quitessential common man ‘Wagle’. Each episode is a separate story about this middle class family and their day to day, almost mundane, yet exciting life. Anxieties, anticipation, apprehensions, appreciations, appalling incidents, … all form a part of their small and simple world. The serial was as much loved in North India as it was in the South.

There was this one episode from the serial, which I somehow always remember during the Diwali Festival. In that, Wagle goes shopping for new fabric that was to used for the new curtains for their small house for Diwali. He forgets how much meter he was required to purchase, by his wife. And he lands up buying much much more then needed. Now to use the extra fabric, the family decides to use it by making shirts and other household items, out of it. So on Diwali eve, we see the whole family in same clothes, with same curtains, dinning mats and bed sheets….it was simply hilarious.

The new holder of the “world’s biggest dog” title in the Guinness Book of World Records is a 3-year-old Great Dane named Gibson.

Gibson is seven feet tall. Let me repeat… this dog is seven fucking feet tall.

He was officially named the planet’s tallest dog Tuesday by officials with Guinness who flew to California from England to see Gibson.

Gibson’s owner, Sandy Hall, said she never dreamed Gibson would turn out to be the planet’s tallest dog. She said the dog is a gift.

“I’ve had Danes since 1981,” Hall said. “I’ve never seen anything like this –ever.”

That’s not a pet, it’s a monster!