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Epiphany of the 19:30 TV Slot

The thing with music is that you get addicted to it. My problem with music is that it takes me time to get used to a type of music, but once I get into its soul, it’s very difficult for me to stay away from it. 

The reason I am writing this is because, all of a sudden my subconscious mind reminded me of a song which happened to be the title track of an Assamese daily soap back in 2008 or 2009. I was in class 8th or 9th probably and this song by Papon was defiantly charismatic. But the issue here is that I don’t remember it. I just know that it shared the same name as the TV soap. But nowhere close to my mind is its name. 

The plot of the soap revolved around Guwahati University and it was telecasted every Wednesday or Thursday at 7:30 pm, post the Assamese News. I might have started the post on a very different note, talking about a particular song. But this suddenly instigated me to write about those brilliant TV serials, to be more specific Assamese TV serials which were telecasted via PPC NE or Program Production Centre North East. 


To get the plot of whole post clear, let me put some light on what I am talking about. Back in the days, when satellite TV channels did not really exist in Assam, the population was just left to PPC NE and DD Doordarshan for its dose of Assamese drama and production. At around 3.00 pm, DD National went offline and DD NE came on air. By 6 pm, DD NE was off air and we had DD Guwahati taking over the air time. So mind it, three channels in the same band providing variety of programs. 

DD Guwahati followed the perfect ‘development communication’ model of media. It had programs on health, agriculture; daily 15 minutes of regional news in Assamese and 15 minutes of news from the PPC NE in English. And post that 30 minutes worth of TV drama or soaps. 

Now these 30 minutes used to be very important for us. ‘Us’ here means the family. As a young kid I had many restrictions regarding TV timings. News was one thing which I never skipped and since it was followed by that 7:30 slot of TV soaps, I usually accompanied her in watching them. No matter how many Hindi soaps we watched, mother tongue is always special. So whatever we watched, it used to be very dear to us. There were soaps based on common house hold problems. They used to be realistic, no punar janam and other comedy. And trust me these soaps were hits because a majority of the population could associate themselves with the story being depicted. 

And the eagerness possibly increased because we had to wait for a week to watch a program and there used to be no repeat telecasts. So the pain of missing one episode cannot be just described in words. 
This 7:30 TV soaps made me encounter with this beautiful song about which I mentioned in the second paragraph. There are numerous memories which I can associate with those TV serials. A part of my childhood was associated with the time slot of 7:00 to 8:00 pm. Those TV moments inspired me to be journalist, probably. Meanwhile, the search for the song continues and if anyone has any information feel free to contact me or comment below.  

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