I have personally felt that if you listen to the same song over and over, no matter how insipid your original reactions were, you start liking it. It means, the song has "grown on" to you. The greatest example of this phenomenon is the infamous song "Kolaveri Di". The stupidly catchy tune has managed to play in loops inside my brain more than once.
The same thing can be said about personal relationships, too. Let's say you hate a person to such an extent that even his/her shadow makes you annoyed. Let's call her "D". As you don't like D, it is natural that you will try to avoid her as much as possible. Maybe you will turn right when she is headed left, and maybe you will go to sleep when she has just awoken, etc. etc.
However, what happens when D is assigned as your boss? Or your day to day work depends on her close cooperation? You start meeting her everyday, and eventually chances are high that you start developing a liking for her (in a non-romantic way--usage of "her" instead of "him" has been emphasized solely on a random basis, and you, the reader might be a "she", too). Although you two become a good team, hints of your past bitterness and resentment stays, and sometimes gets exposed, too. However, work being the priority here makes things easier for you and you are prompt in ironing out any wrinkles that might have caused due to the unintended exposure of "true feelings"!
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| Logo taken from BTV Website |
In a nutshell, time heals all wounds--no matter how deep they are. However, this doesn't work for me in the case of BTV; the national television channel of Bangladesh. I have desperately hated this channel from my youth, and the feeling of hatred has reached such a peak that it is now more comparable with apathy mountain and mount sympathy. Initially, it was a curiosity as to why a state run channel is so boring and lame, but then the feeling of antagonism started flowing in when we got exposed to cable TV.
Before the cable channels came in, BTV had monopoly business over TV viewership in Bangladesh. Just like many other monopolies of Bangladesh (e.g. Citycell), they took extreme liberties with what they wanted to feed the customers.
Watching a live cricket game on TV was almost always thrilling. Even though Bangladesh did not have the ODI or Test status, we still enjoyed watching our lads play against Pakistan or India during the Asia cup tournament. Also, the Abahani VS Mohammedan seasonal clashes for the Football league or Federation cup was always exceptionally thrilling. Actually, the football games were more frequent and popular back then. However, just like the perfect killjoy, BTV would step in with their stale, bigoted, biased and most uninspired brand of "News" every hour or so, effectively interrupting the live telecast.
Abahani 1 - Mohammedan 1--just 5 minutes left till the game ends. The time is 7:58 PM, and suddenly Kaiser Hamid has made a foul on Aslam--inside the D-box. Result? A penalty. Aslam is slowly advancing towards the penalty kickoff area. Suddenly, you see the "Smritishoudho" (Martyr Monument) and a music starts playing. That dreadful music....that blasted announcement of the abomination called "Raat 8 tar shongbaad". Just because of BTV, I have always hated a beautiful song like "Shob kota janala khule dao na".
My dad had a very handy AM/FM radio which would be frantically searched and activated during times like these. Sometimes Radio Bangladesh/Bangladesh Betar also betrayed--they'd also start broadcasting news. But in most cases, when live telecast was blocked out by news, radio came as the savior and instead of seeing the action, we would have to remain satisfied with listening to the commentaries from "Hamid bhai/Tawfiq bhai/Jafrullah Sharafat bhai", etc.
By the time the "news" is over, you can actually know the result of the game. BTV was not even generous enough to show the missed portion of the game later on. They would just move on to their crappy brand of drama and or musical shows pretending that nothing really happened in between.
The anchors on news at 8 were truly jokers (shongs) and they should have been removed (baad) from live telecasts. Things got really comical during the English news telecasts. Wrong grammar, incorrect pronunciations, heavy reliance on cliche and usage of archaic vocabulary made the "News at 10" a true assembly of duffers and dumb peoples. I even had to bear watching the most horrific of scenes--a newscaster picking her nose thinking that she was offline. I even got to hear another person alerting the nose picker.
Thanks to the plethora of cable channels and the blessed internet, I no longer need to rely on BTV for anything!
Recently, however, I have been forced to watch some live telecasts on BTV. Reasons? Either no cable channels were showing the game I wanted to see or those channels were not available in my cable network. I painfully realized that nothing has changed when it comes to BTV. I really feel sorry for the people who lack the freedom of choice during watching the TV.
A problem with our nation is that we are often good at doing the wrong things. When you go to a concert or any cultural program, it never starts on time. Either the musicians are too busy "jamming" or they just don't show up on time. To make things worse, sometimes the "oh so busy I can't buckle up my shoes" chief (read cheap) guest who is supposed to inaugurate the event has forgotten the day and time and forgot to show up.
These are atrocities, and they are no less in number. I am yet to see a public or private event start on the billed time, i.e. no wedding ceremony has actually started at 7:30 PM sharp, nor did it end before midnight. Also, you never work from 9 to 6, it is either 10 to 9 or 9 to 9 or some other, random, overtime filled working hour.
However, when it comes to showing us the abomination, BTV has remained super efficient. In my whole life, I haven't seen the BTV miss even a single episode of this show(!). Even when the whole nation was gloating in darkness, BTV still showed 8 tar shongbad! No matter whether it's rain or sun, or even snow(!), BTV will show you 8 tar shongbad and news at 10.
Surprisingly, BTV is very much a neutral organization. No matter whether it is BNP or AL, they still side with the government. They are the most unbiased and inelastic organization in Bangladesh. No matter what the situation demands, they will refrain from criticizing the government. They are never biased towards any political parties, they are impartial to the government.
So basically, BTV has become like Pravda, which acted as an unofficial propaganda machine of the Soviet communist party. (Joke) Nepoleon was heard saying that if he had a newspaper like Pravda, people would not even know that he lost the war in Waterloo.
By the way, BTV has a website(!). Surprise! Surprise! According to the site, their objective is:
As a state run organization, it is accountable to the mass people of Bangladesh. It aims at the development of the lives of the people and socio-economic progress through its creative programs. The core objective of Bangladesh Television is to dissemination of information, extension of education, motivation for development activities and entertainment are the major principles followed by BTV for its broadcasting. National and international news, documentary and development programs and various entertainment programs are aired by BTV. For international news BTV gets supports from international News agencies and broadcasters. On the other hand, BTV imports some foreign entertainment programs. However, for national news, documentaries and entertainment programs, BTV produces programs by itself. Besides, local production houses have come forward with their productions and BTV televises the programs on terms and conditions agreed to both.
Tunnel vision (Also known as "Kalnienk Vision") is the loss of peripheral vision with retention of central vision, resulting in a constricted circular tunnel-like field of vision. This is what is wrong with BTV. Instead of being a television channel, they have turned in to a tunnel vision channel.
The anchors on news at 8 were truly jokers (shongs) and they should have been removed (baad) from live telecasts. Things got really comical during the English news telecasts. Wrong grammar, incorrect pronunciations, heavy reliance on cliche and usage of archaic vocabulary made the "News at 10" a true assembly of duffers and dumb peoples. I even had to bear watching the most horrific of scenes--a newscaster picking her nose thinking that she was offline. I even got to hear another person alerting the nose picker.
Thanks to the plethora of cable channels and the blessed internet, I no longer need to rely on BTV for anything!
Recently, however, I have been forced to watch some live telecasts on BTV. Reasons? Either no cable channels were showing the game I wanted to see or those channels were not available in my cable network. I painfully realized that nothing has changed when it comes to BTV. I really feel sorry for the people who lack the freedom of choice during watching the TV.
A problem with our nation is that we are often good at doing the wrong things. When you go to a concert or any cultural program, it never starts on time. Either the musicians are too busy "jamming" or they just don't show up on time. To make things worse, sometimes the "oh so busy I can't buckle up my shoes" chief (read cheap) guest who is supposed to inaugurate the event has forgotten the day and time and forgot to show up.
These are atrocities, and they are no less in number. I am yet to see a public or private event start on the billed time, i.e. no wedding ceremony has actually started at 7:30 PM sharp, nor did it end before midnight. Also, you never work from 9 to 6, it is either 10 to 9 or 9 to 9 or some other, random, overtime filled working hour.
However, when it comes to showing us the abomination, BTV has remained super efficient. In my whole life, I haven't seen the BTV miss even a single episode of this show(!). Even when the whole nation was gloating in darkness, BTV still showed 8 tar shongbad! No matter whether it's rain or sun, or even snow(!), BTV will show you 8 tar shongbad and news at 10.
Surprisingly, BTV is very much a neutral organization. No matter whether it is BNP or AL, they still side with the government. They are the most unbiased and inelastic organization in Bangladesh. No matter what the situation demands, they will refrain from criticizing the government. They are never biased towards any political parties, they are impartial to the government.
So basically, BTV has become like Pravda, which acted as an unofficial propaganda machine of the Soviet communist party. (Joke) Nepoleon was heard saying that if he had a newspaper like Pravda, people would not even know that he lost the war in Waterloo.
By the way, BTV has a website(!). Surprise! Surprise! According to the site, their objective is:
As a state run organization, it is accountable to the mass people of Bangladesh. It aims at the development of the lives of the people and socio-economic progress through its creative programs. The core objective of Bangladesh Television is to dissemination of information, extension of education, motivation for development activities and entertainment are the major principles followed by BTV for its broadcasting. National and international news, documentary and development programs and various entertainment programs are aired by BTV. For international news BTV gets supports from international News agencies and broadcasters. On the other hand, BTV imports some foreign entertainment programs. However, for national news, documentaries and entertainment programs, BTV produces programs by itself. Besides, local production houses have come forward with their productions and BTV televises the programs on terms and conditions agreed to both.
Tunnel vision (Also known as "Kalnienk Vision") is the loss of peripheral vision with retention of central vision, resulting in a constricted circular tunnel-like field of vision. This is what is wrong with BTV. Instead of being a television channel, they have turned in to a tunnel vision channel.
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