Super Sundays of the yore

Published on July 19, 2004 By Confusing Musings In Entertainment

Those were the different times. There was no cable TV. There was no overdose of movies, films, celebrities. When a TV Remote was not the bone of contention in the house. No scheming saas-bahus. The days when Wednesdays and Fridays were special because those were the Chitrahar days. Children spent their evening playing outdoor games, not with Cartoon Network and elderly watched news at 2040 hours instead of Kasauti Zindagi Ki. Saturday was not an off-day, but the day of Giant Robot & Johnny Socco and Phool Khiley Hain Gulshan-Gulshan. And then those Super Sundays.

Today , Sunday or any other day is no different as far television is concerned. One doesn't even notice as they go by. But those Sundays, which we witnessed during our teens were very special. They were eagerly awaited. The day started with Rangoli. After skipping the Gurbani, sponsored by Taxila TV, came the real celebration time.

The Nine'o clock, time for real,quality cartoon. Ribticklers like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck giving us laughter or our adventure hero - HE-Man, The Master of Universe demolishing the Skeleton and company. Ofcourse this was before epics Ramayan , Mahabarat and Chanyaka claimed that prime time. I also adored the Mowgli and his face-off with SherKhan.

Then we had famous child detectives coming our way. The original, Ek Do Teen Char ("charo milker saath chalein to kerdein chamtkar"), Khel Khel Mein, and the adaptation from Hitchcock's famous The Three Investigators, - a serial called Super Six. But my most favourite series has to be Indradhanush, where Sunny Singh played the super genius kid who makes a computer in which a good alien gets in. And then that alien starts sending Sunny 's brother (played by Akshay Anand) in past and future to sort out their problems.There were interesting situations like seeing you own father as a new born baby in past or meeting your clone in future, and I said vooowwww what a hi-tech idea!! . Unfortunately, they stopped the serial in midway. We also had our own Star-Trek series - Space City -Sigma with Captain Shakti being half-human, half machine.

Who can forget the irrepressible Rajani, so naturally-funny Jayant Kripilani in Mr and Mrs and the first of the Anand Mahendru comedies -Idhar-Udhar. His Dekh-Bhai-Dekh , the mother of all comedies came much later. There was this serial called Wah Janab ,written by Sharad Joshi based on some muslim neighbour hood in Lucknow, which became launch pad for Shekhar Suman in television. Kiran Juneza looked ravishing . Those were the days when serials used to have terrific title songs - "Har khoob ke chehrey se uthatey hum Naqab, kya kehney Wah Janab!".

Neev took us to school days, and it was amazing that it was directed by a young guy a little more than our age. Faster Fanny was also very refreshing.

Siddhart Basu's quiz was a must watch. That was the first time probably I first heard about IITs, as they use to participate in this event.

I don't know about the others, I was immensely fascinated by Spiderman, even more than even Superman. That's probably because though I had read Superman comics, I saw Spiderman before on TV. I don't know why they showed it only for 15 mints. But yes, those 3 hours before Spiderman were very difficult to kill because that was time for regional language films, which apart from Punjabi, a little bit - I understood none.

Evenings, like every other Sunday evening was the Movie Time. One and only hindi movie of the week, though later they started movie on Saturdays as well. They had also started late night movies on Thursday, which I had sneaked quite a few

Well Sundays will never be same again, and the kids today are not even aware of the stuff they are missing. I miss them too. Someone please give me those super Sundays again. I wish some alien gets into my comp and sends me to my past

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