CAS-trated

Well, have you ever found yourself just sitting, staring at the TV and in a moment of profound horror realizing that it wasn’t on? No, I thought so, but its been happening to me a lot in the past three days. The government by a very biased random draw came up with the god fearing, mildly mannered locality of south Delhi as the guinea pig to try out the new Conditional Access System and all that was left for me, were the free to air channels which turned out to be a collection of hindi and regional news intermingled horrifically with every doordarshan and punjabi music channel conceivable.
The sharp and sophisticated journalism of the BBC and the unerring assessment of financial markets by CNBC replaced by the sansanikhez khabarein of channels like S1 and tez, which have taken a very keen interest in the ash-abhi union. The unforgettable melodies of VH1 Classics swapped with every imaginable prefix of Singh and Kaur pelting out the latest Punjabi folk songs all the way from Canada. The EPL replaced by the exhilaration of the (n+1)th re-run of the Doha games and just to put the icing on the cake there is DDs answere to Ekta Kapoor in the shape of ‘Lal Khothi Kiski’.
In the most recent of my moments of horror I caught myself wondering of the similarities of this situation and impotency. Think about it, you got the necessary hardware (in one case the television in the other your genitals), you can even use the equipment (we’ll leave out the details) but as in the words of Linkin Park “in the end it doesn’t even matter”. There is this ever growing void of nothingness like the silence between Steve and Susan in that call on Coupling. In a very fitting conclusion and as my message to the heartless rulers of this land, I quote Stan of southpark fame (with some mods),” you killed TV. You bastard”