The VCR Era

At 12 AM, sleep tried to take over completely, but a hot cup of tea got me going. At 3 AM, it was twilight zone; I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or dreaming. By 7 AM, the show was over and I was all set for the bed. If you are thinking that this is a routine for an exam preparation, you couldn’t be more wrong. This is the routine that was practiced in many Indian households back in the 80s when the VCR was at the peak of its existence. This was the generation that waited patiently for Saptahiki on Friday to catch a glimpse of the Sunday movie. Then on Sunday evening, all roads would become deserted and everybody got tuned in to Doordarshan by 6PM. The movies ran by Indian standard time back then which means they never started on time and many a times one had to patiently tolerate the ‘ghadi’ which was an image put up to tune up the setup of your TV before the beginning of the movie.

With the arrival of VCR, this generation was thrust into a new era all of a sudden. Colored TVs were commonplace by then (except for may be Rawat house who waited for the Jains to upgrade who in turn got inspired by the Gulatis) and so were the video shacks that made tons of money renting the video cassettes. For households that didn’t have colored TVs, these fellas also offered those for rent, so often times when you would order a bunch of movies, a technician would arrive with a TV, VCR, wires and the cassettes and set everything up in front of an eager crowd.
Old Mitsubishi VCR (Taken from -http://www.flickr.com/photos/rcadimensia/4155861813/)

Before ordering the movies, all near ones and dear ones were called and invited for the show and they would arrive on time with their blankets and all. The furniture in the living room would then be moved away and mattreses would be laid out so everybody could sit comfortably and sleep in the middle of the night if they had to. The show mostly started at around 7-8PM when uncles also had come back home from office and could join the party. Overusage of cassettes often resulted in bad tapes and most of the prints were ended up being watched with tracking lines in the middle of the screen or sometimes with shaky picture. A total of about 4-5 movies were watched during one session from 7PM to 7AM straight.

With the coming of the cable TV in the late 80s, this practice became outdated though, and gone were the days of one movie a week as telecasted by DD or 5 movies a night as seen on VCR. Now you have multiple movies running simultaneously 24 hours a day, but the appreciation is lost. Besides the social interacton and the pleasure of watching movies in a group with people making funny comments is no longer there.