My driver walked into my bedroom this morning, to help me move some furniture, looked at my little TV set and said imploring, “Sir you should change your TV!” I frowned as he left the room, then looked at my faithful idiot box:
There’s nothing wrong with her!
She’s served me well; fifteen years and still going strong!
Shahrukh Khan still looks like Shahrukh Khan, a little older though then agile youngster who pranced once on also young screen. Katrina; as beautiful as on my neighbors set and so are Kareena and a horde of other youngsters whose faces I don’t know not for lack of picture clarity but want of knowledge on my part. Oh yes and the news readers speak with the same urgency on my old set pretending that ant killed in London is important enough for me to switch off favorite Raymond show and listen to intense, impassioned prattling.
Nothing wrong with my TV sir!
She offers as many channels as my neighbor’s and if perchance his does a dozen more, my fingers look less worn from pressing remote all evening long!
She sits in a little niche in a cupboard in my bedroom, has seen my body change without offering too many changes herself. And when I write like I do now, she sits blank and patient, not offering seductive glances with ‘wide screen’ or ‘flat front’ but her rounded matronly figure quietly waiting for my fingers to caress knob and leap her into action.
There’s nothing the matter with her sir!
“Bring her to the showroom,” shout the salesmen, “and we’ll send you back with a fantastic exchange!”
“But what’s wrong with her?” I ask.
“How old?”
“Fifteen!”
“You crazy?”
“Should I be?”
She sits in niche and smiles at me; I stare back happy,
“T’would be difficult,” I whisper lovingly, “to adapt to stranger in this room! No matter if she be blessed with robust flatness and slim frame! To have such sleek, sensation staring fixedly back would take too much getting accustomed to my dear, and to what avail, after all Shahrukh still looks like Shahrukh, katrina also as beautiful as on neighbors set and so is Kareena, and of course the newsreader speaks…….
“No exchange!” I say firmly and pat her on the head; a little too firmly maybe; she stops working; nothing that a rap and a shake on her tough sides doesn’t sort out and she’s back to normal again!
Now which flat screen or slim side could have managed that?
