COMING SOON: CHANGE IN CAST

BY BISWADEEP GHOSH

(As you read this, I am completing my last working day in The Maharashtra Herald, Pune. For those of my friends who don't know already, I will be joining The Times of India, Pune, as the Editor of Pune Times from the 1st of July.
The copyright of the column rests with The Maharashtra Herald.)

As a kid, I was addicted to broadcasting on the radio. Sitting close to an antiquated radio with prehistoric speakers that gargled incessantly, I would listen to commentators describing Davis cup matches. A journey with every tennis match was a trek in trance. Shutting myself from the world, I would hear the commentator explain how Vijay Amritaj returned a Russell Simpson smash. All the while, I would visualise how Vijay must have looked while hitting the shot, having seen his pictures in the newspaper my uncle subscribed. Imagination was a vital tool of appreciation, that being an era when players did not escape from the newspapers' pages to turn into pictures that moved, spoke, played.

But, my dream of seeing my stars in action came true pretty soon. I did see Vijay play on the court, albeit a jaded Vijay who could produce very few flashes of his legendary genius. I saw Sunny Gavaskar wearing a skull cap; made sure that I watched the solitary soap Hum Log; and even checked out Krishi Darshan when I had nothing better to do. During that time, the common man's language of speech underwent a change. Out went broadcast, since not many knew that broadcast could be used to refer to transmission by television anyway. In came telecast, a popular usage signifying a package of what we saw and heard. Telecast was not just another new word in the dictionary. It epitomised how, because of the monopoly of a single channel, our lives had metamorphosed thoroughly.

It was only sometime ago that I bumped into a tech-savvy youngster. The boy held a tiny gadget, and discussed something that sounded like broadcast but was not. I soon figured out that he was talking of podcast, a new term I had never ever heard before. In this column, I have told several tiny stories through two narrators: one, Virus Locha, a VJ who always seemed to unearth a shocking reality while at work. The other was Trustosaurus, a dinosaur who couldn't acclimatise to the decadence in modern society. Because of what they experienced, Virus got upset from time to time. Much more emotional, Trust got consumed by depression, resulting in conflicts within his inner self that he handled very badly.

While hearing the kid talk about podcast, I felt as if I had a bit of both Virus and Trust in me. I knew nothing about podcast, and the fluency with which the kid used the term shocked me no end. I seemed to have lost all trust in my ability to stay in touch with most things modern. There was nothing gross about podcast, but I was really low since I had no idea of what it implied.

Why am I talking about my inability to understand podcast not long ago? Just as broadcast made way for telecast, while podcast became a popular way of life later, this space will see a different presence on this day from next week. There will be a new name, a new style, a new set of stories. Don't ask me why, since I know nothing more than the cliched fact of change being an inevitability we must accept. Call that living or, better still, life.