The man was screeching into the mike madly, quite hysterical at times, and strangely the crowd stood transfixed like rabbits staring into a head light. The man on stage took large gasps of breath before exploding back into the mike with a ferocity that felt like the bass out of a twelve string guitarist working on base, but this was no metal head; he was an activist of some sort. He looked determined and was sadly exhausting all his eloquent praises on a phony little bald headed man sitting beside him, who was yawning deliberately, so it seemed. And then, tiny little annoying dots came spurting out of the electron discharger hitting the television screen with an infinitely immeasurable accuracy, the connection was lost. In the middle of a vociferous and audacious episode of political transcendence, my dad decided to unplug the TV cable and was kind enough to answer my inquiring mood (we were shifting to a new home). I did not share socially affecting proclivities such as politics, or sermons of the same, but this last piece had a hidden elegance of its own, largely because the man on stage was in the middle of a captivating speech.
I desperately wanted to turn the TV set on and check out if the program would be re-telecasted. After we moved out to the new place, I and my dad worked on fixing the antenna onto a pole erected clearly for that purpose as indicated by my dad. The annoying dots continued to exploit my naïve state of mind, they were all over the TV screen (small black and white TV from a trust worthy manufacturer EC TV, the manufacturer of these TVs must have monopolized the market, for every household at that time had the same TV, well at least all the lower to middle class families did). After two days of trial and errors, I was offered solace. My dad explained that the connection was not established and could possibly be because the antenna was not properly mounted (at a good height so the surrounding nuisance would not disturb the reception and at the right inclination towards the TV tower, for which he simply had no explanation, he just knew that it had to be right). I quickly ran out to the roof top, to check if my antenna was disturbed by an impertinent crow, who must have pushed the antenna‘s inclination way off tangent, while taking off. Sometimes, the wind drifted it off, other times, it would be the sun overheating the clamps that the antenna precariously hung on; on a hot sunny afternoon, and the clamps would soon relapse into loose fixtures and bring the whole apparatus down the length of the pole.
Presently, the antenna appeared unmoved either by the wind or by a passing crow. It was time for some careful analysis, so I slowly descended down the stairs to get my unique clippers (all its teeth, quarter of their original size, were now present only as the indications of a glory that the clippers once possessed in a not so distant future, the pair of clippers was so old that the set could only be used to batter down objects as a small sized hammer would do). While I was rummaging through the tool kit, I found a horse shoe magnet, one that my dad gifted to me when I was too young to envisage the far reaching uses of the exquisite piece. I vividly remember that day, I had a running fever and was denying to get a common injection (for fever) done, it was horrible, but my dad promised me a gift if I just endured the pain and suffering of the needle for a trifle ten seconds, that was how I got the immaculately crafted piece of magnet into my tool kit. It was mine, the feeling of owning a piece of scientific marvel was so enriching that my whole person was lifting itself to suit the ownership prerequisites of the magnet.
Presently, I took the magnet along with the clippers and a screw driver to the roof top, and after some clever and ingenious work of art (using clippers to beat the clamp grips followed by screw driver meddling), I disengaged the antenna and placed it on the parapet wall. I set the direction of the antenna with the longer perpendicular arms in the back (to reflect) and the shorter ones in the front (to receive) and pointed it in the direction of the TV tower which was at a visible gradient from my roof top, now I took the magnet and left it on the middle arm of the antenna. My idea was that the magnet would attract radio waves, or at least add to the waves received, which would superimpose with the magnetic field and thereby become potent for my weak and famished TV to receive.
I came into the living room and turned on the TV, It was quite extraordinary, the clarity of the reception was twofold (where there were blue dots and neutral audio, now there was audio on the background), so I climbed the roof and changed the configuration of the magnet-antenna assembly, pointed the magnet towards the north hoping that the earth’s magnetic field would have some effect on the magnet and together the radio waves might simply succumb to this profusion of relentless and intense enquiries from a lone antenna over a sea of nothingness (for my home was in outskirts and there was no neighbor with a TV in the near vicinity, this was a plus, for the competition to share the radio waves would not be there, or so I thought at the time). It was phenomenal, now there was video and audio, not as clear for the general audience, but clear enough for a psyche with scientific proclivities. Now, all I needed was another magnet that would complement the original one and together the assembly would manifest a power of unimaginable magnitude, the glitch was, where do I get this additional magnet from?
Later that night, while I was ruminating, my dog came to sit beside me and he began ruminating obediently (perhaps for the common cause, or I thought so at the time). After a period of intense and thought provoking rumination, my dog now took to his original self; sniffing at every object, feeling every object promptly with his pointed brownish nostrils. Then I shuddered at once with the thought that all the objects acted as receptors and my dog was attending to the requests; he was not merely sniffing arbitrarily, but was entertaining only those objects which requested him (a frog with its nagging sound, or a moth with its fluttering wings or a lizard with its jet like speed, or a worm with its smell or even his feces with a unique fragrance). So I needed to find another receptor and situate it beside the antenna to magnify the reception. It did not take long for me to figure out that I could use my dad’s radio; all I needed was to wait for my dad to leave for work the next day, for he would not let me spoil the radio for its emotional attachments and that sort of a thing. So I waited.
By the next morning, I had a far better idea, instead of simply resting the radio beside antenna; I could open it up, and simply disassemble the magnet from the circuit inside, and mount it over the antenna. I could simply remove the magnet after I complete my present scientific pursuit and fit it carefully in the radio circuit. It was clever and infallible. I simply could not contemplate a malfunction in this episode of a sure sighted scientific adventure.
Well, it just so happened that the TV showed excitable new features, now there was video that ran up and down as if it was escaping from above and re-emerging from below, this was a much needed impetus (for I was working under a pressure that I would disassemble the decades old emotionally attached radio for nothing). It was a tragic situation at the end, for my dad came home to find out that neither the TV nor the radio was in a presentable manner. He noticed that I appeared very tired (for I was working during the day in resting the antenna assembly on the pole at a selected inclination, which took perpetual visits to the roof top, I was not satisfied with the performance, every time I came into the living room, TV showed some evident transformation, but still incomplete) so he enquired, and I confessed that I could not fully comprehend the radio’s circuit and needed some time to fix it. He warned me against climbing on to the parapet wall, alone in the most vulnerable conditions, balancing the antenna assembly on my shoulders, holding the pole with one hand and trying to fix the clamps by other hand, he offered to help and I refused.
The next morning, I and my dad worked for over a couple of hours trying to figure out the best inclination for the antenna assembly, as the sun rose high enough, my dad laid down clear rules (that I would under no circumstances revisit the configuration until dusk). So the day passed uneventfully, I was gazing at the TV tower trying to decipher the effect of the mountain very close to my home on the sinusoidal waves. So when my dad returned to home, we got down to work immediately. This time, I ingeniously pulled the antenna away from the mountain’s focus by tilting it a tad away from the usual straight inclination hoping that the reflected waves from the mountain side would not hinder with the progress made so far. So there it was, it worked; now we had a stable video that did not mysteriously disappear from the top only to reappear from the bottom.
At the end of this project, I had my fingers scrubbed off the outer skin (thanks to the elusive copper wire I was peeling out of the thick black plastic overall of TV cable with a new blade I slipped out of my dad’s shaving kit), I was spending more time with the antenna and less time with my dog (the relationship seemed in turmoil), and I grew increasingly impatient with the wind or crows that tried to unsettle the immaculate configuration. Every time this happened, I got summoned for duty; I took the responsibility with utmost dignity, referred to the charcoal arrow signs I drew on the parapet wall beside the pole and proceeded to carefully deploy the system, and as the time passed, I became increasingly aware that I was still dissatisfied with the final outcome and was prepared to give it another shot.
One morning, on my routine maintenance checks, when I was standing on the parapet wall, I found out at a distance, a tall guy with stout shoulders unrolling cable wire as he walked behind it. He was proceeding in the direction of my home. I later found out that my parents were sympathetic with my arduous endeavors and decided to surprise me with the local cable connection which would put me out of my misery at once. The cable guy simply pulled the doordarshan plug out of the TV socket and plugged in the local cable wire. Bingo, now we had crystal clear reception and four channels. I felt as if the blood drained out of my body, I did not know what to feel, pleased that we had four channels or appalled that the fire of my scientific novelty was put off without much thought.
I never got summoned to rectify things with the present network on TV, my parents thought it was for my good, but I had so much fun in doing things along with my dad, and now sadly, he just sits there watching news from all the four channels, one after another, and as the number of channels increased, we never really indulged in sportive spoiling of things as we did earlier. The episode remained as a painful memory of a technological advance that slipped into the privacy of relations between me and my dad, me and my dog (for the relations now were taken for granted, where once, we took time in nurturing and bettering, enriching and relishing, feeling and fulfilling, what with all the time that was left after watching doordarshan).
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