My TV-less Life

We are a dying breed in Chennai. oh wait, we are probably the only ones left probably because we were the only ones to start with! We are a family of four that houses the following:

a. Four PCs only one of which is functional and another which is a company provided laptop which stays ours as long as we are their's(teh company's that is). The other two 'puters rest atop a wooden cupboard and serve as the loo for dust mites, the poop of which invariably trigger an Ig E mediated reaction in three of the four above mentioned family members.

b.A possessed JVC music player that does not play Cd's or tapes and that cannot be controlled with the remote control that came with it though the cd tray keeps frisking out when no one is around. Spooky, yes.

c. A personal portable digital player for every member, that has redefined fashion in a lot of ways. For example, gone are the days when the women of the household(my mom and i) sport a golden necklace. Instead we wear our Yepp /Creative, and seriously, THAT is a lot funkier than a piece of function less metal, albeit precious.

I shall terminate the list here to start another one which will point out that

a. I wasn't trying to show off

b. The list is not complete, we do have a fridge ,micro wave etc, but they do not serve to highlight point c though they support point d.

c. A TV didn't figure in the top three of my list. And that's what makes us a dying breed.

d. We aint paupers who can't afford a TV.

The History:

We did have a TV. Two in fact, four if you include the portable ones that my folks got for their folks, which they returned to us coz the screens were too small.None of them count anyway, coz we had them for a negligible amount of time.

What happened to the TVs?
We sold them.

why?
coz' my mom decided so..

why?

Part One: The Promises
Being TV-less ensure that the our grey matter stays grey and not some brown rotting mass which apparently iswhat happens in a TV addicts braint. It would ensure that violence,sex and advertisements don't corrupt our moral judgment of things. It would ensure that our family stays together for it does away with the remote control fights that has known to push families apart. this in turn would ensure more quality time with the family. We'd also turn out to be nicer human beings( in what way, i don't know, but if mom says it is so, then it IS so. mum is the word.)
in short, it's good for the soul , in a truly incomprehensible way,

Why?

Part Two: The Real Thing
coz she wanted our lives to be miserable and unenlightened(which she obviously thought was good for the soul). So when everybody in school was trying out the ' how you doing?' stunt of Joey of friends...we'd scratch our heads and say, ' yeh am good, whats with the drawl n nod dude?' And yeh, we'd get laughed at initially for not having recognised the joey imitation and later pardoned (not our fault that we didn't know who this joey guy was) and pitied (after we spewed our sob stories of our sad TV-less lives). and finally respected and awed at , for the TV is almost equated to a basic need isn't it, like food,water,shelter and TV?
no more like, pizzas,coke,room-with-ac and TV and now the internet.

ok, here, i'd like to pause and reflect on how lucky i am.
oh hear ye god, i'm thankful, that i have been blessed with the internet. aye. and with an awesome speed at that!

ok, so it is hard to believe that a family in Chennai has lived without a TV under their roof.
Sans set-up box, believable. but no TV? That's like a childhood devoid of the right kind of stimulus for a growing child! or worse, like being an orphan!
But we did survive, albeit with the ugly scars of ignorance that could have been prevented by the blinding enlightenment via the Discovery channel or Sun TV. Or heck, even the Doordarshan!
And when I think back, we didn't have much of the quality time with the family either. We don't do dinners out or for that matter, 'in' together for we don't have a couch in front of the TV-that's-not-there that usually serves to bond other families together.
We don't know half the things that are happening in the world. I do realize that internet is a good source of news and all, but heck, there are a lot more fun things to do on the internet than read drab news that doesn't seem to affect me. Instead we(bro n i ) resort to borrowed pirated Cds**(bad for society, punishable crime and all) and bumming around other people's houses for the TV( wrong motive for a friendship) and fight over the one functioning computer that can be used for murfing around.
Life without a TV hasn't made it any better, but it sure does suck!
* see, i did warn u in my previous post that my posts would contain rants, raves and craves.
** disclaimer: don't sue us. this is not a confession
pssst: amma don't read this on Mother's day.