Verma household has never any dull moments. The characters— Ranjit, Renu and Raja deal with day-to-day oddities in middle class life with (over)dose of humour. Ye Jo Hai Zindagi was a must-watch sitcom on Friday nights in 1980s. The title song set the tone of the serial as Kishor Kumar sang it with frivolous vivacity that only he could do with remarkable ease.
Doordarshan news was brought out by news readers like Salma Sultana with cascading silky hair, Geetanjali Ayer in polished immaculate pronunciation, Minu with next-door-girl smile,Tejeswar Singh in baritone voice among others. They captured the imagination of lakhs of viewers in the country. They hogged the limelight with celebrity status.
Rajani fought injustice in society with a combination of brain and rhetorical brawn on Sunday mornings. Folks across the country took in her beauty and gasped at her bravery.
A neatly dressed youthful Pronoy Roy took us on a round around the world in The World This Week.
Sunday nights were dizzier as snazzy Sidharth Bose qizzed at an unnerving speed with whirlwind of English at students of premium institutes of country.( I, a small town Bengali medium school- going boy, looked at the quiz master in him in absolute awe. How English could be spoken so fast I ruminated on hard!)
It was a Television age that was what the Weston TV advertised in its tagline, “Providing true value”.
Today is November 16,2025.The places fringing Burdwan town are bubbling with activities of kite-fly as it happened in 80s.
It may be a prelude for a time when Kapil Dev said in hesitant smile, “Palmolive da jawab nahi.”A dash of simplicity.
I am sure sanity will be restored and will replace the faster, smarter, noisier television these days with the come back of elusive ‘Palmolivian’ simplicity.
The society, and the planet, at large, will be restored too to its pristine past of mellowed relaxing 80s.
For the time being, let’s hum with bubbling Kishor Kumar, Ye Jo Hai Zindagi / Thodi meethi thodi khatti/ Thodi tikhi thodi fikki/ Phir bhi isko haskar jeene ka/ Ek alag hi hai maza….