Major Road Block ... need to be cleared

Ten or more pages came out of this keyboard fast and smooth. Then the block - a block not yet cleared, even after so many years. It was, and still pricking me from the  bottom of my heart. This has to be cleared.

I thought of writing the rest of our journey without mentioning this incident. But that is impossible. There is no story without Krishnan - our beloved Krishnakumar.

Krishnan was unique. In all respects. He was an ex-Keltron employee. He was an artist of all forms, even in wiring thousands of small cables inside equipment cabinets.

 About 6 feet tall with masculine figure, ever smiling, cracking jokes and always gaining attention. He wore light brown leather shoes and used to drive a Bullet motor bike with a red-colored insulation tape pasted on the rear licence plate. I used to be his pinion rider and at several occassions we recieved admiring looks and special treatment, thinking he was a police officer.

 We never felt anything unusual until the disaster struck. One morning, the fine morning we pulled our first cabie at Pala, the news broke, Krishnan is no more. He took his own life without leaving a trail.

Adieu our beloved Krishna... Pranaam.

Once upon @Asianet

Some Living Memoirs...

Sri. K. Chandrasekharan

Chandrasekharan sir was our Godfather at Trivandrum. Being the Regional Manager, we all techies were initially  reporting to him.I often felt him as the Gentleman in the midst of Professionals. This does not mean that others were not Gentlemen; Chandrasekharan Sir was much more Gentle.

Hailing from a family of ministers, political leaders and other prominent people, and being a retired Department Director (I think he got IAS confered)  he always had connections at the highest levels. Yet, he seldom used these for his own use or for Asianet. I was with him when he went to various offices, to obtain permission to erect Cable posts (wherever KSEB posts are not available). We walked across various section clerks; and one finally said, "there is no rule stating poles cannot be erected by the side of roads, so you go ahead".

Sandwitched between hard-core sales professionals like Manoj Cherian and Ambili Madam on one side and the Finance team under EVG Paul and Management on the other ,he always under high presuure to close on franchises. Even then he advised the francisee hopefuls to rethink twice or thrice before committing. (Remember this was a time where Steve and co. even persuaded the hotel-boys and fishermen to take up a franchisee).

He cared us like a grandfather, I would say. He often took us to his home at Mannanthala where he was staying with his wife and the 15 year old Tibetan vegetarian dog (once in a while he used to buy beef fry for the dog).

Lately I heard that some cable operator acting as a potential franchisee, ditched him by making him sign some papers which turned out to be an NOC letter by Asianet to use KSEB poles for his network. He trusted everyone, and this deception was more that he could hold. I was told he never recovered from that shock and left us for heavely abode. May his soul rest in peace.

LIVE FROM SATELLITE .... VISHU, APRIL 1993

Vishu is the most auspicious day for Malayalees. And for Asianet and yours faithfully in particular, Vishu of 1993 was more auspecious.

So far, Ekran satellite was beaming only the staircase... the color bars at 754MHz. It was on that day, Asianet started full time beaming in Malayalam language.

We, the technocrats in Trivandrum were at Headend from the previous night. All equipments including the Dish antenna was cleaned, all connectioned double and triple checked, and even the (late) Krishnakumar did some chanting of the scripts. Shyam, Hari and Anilan did the supports. P.R Krishnakumar had some superstitions- so he brought some VHS tapes to warm up the situation.

The Vishu day..... Chandrasekharan sir and all of us reached the headend early in the morning. Sasikumar sir and family came later. The time was creeping very slow. When the minute hand touched 7.59, Chandrasekharan sir asked me to switch on the system.

With trembling fingers, I did the "Switch on". There was the count-down on the TV Screen - all of us counted down the seconds... finally zero.. and the now famous 3-D animated Asianet logo appreared with the theme music, and finally the title song "Shyama Sundara Kera Kedara Bhoomi". All of us hugged each other as if we had launched a satellite to the moon.

Similar scenes happened at Ernakulam with Steve and co. on the helm and at Calicut (Vadakara) by Ramesh and team. Unfortunately, at the fouth location - Pooram Ground at Trichur, signal was not recievable. Later, it was heard, when Sri. Ashok Madhavan sir, our GM(Tech) climbed on a chair to look up, our MD, Sri. Sivashankaran sir  asked in a typical musical note,  " Ashooooook, can youuuu seeeeee the satelliiiiiite nowwwww?

Tail Piece

This was at Kanakakkunnu Palace, next week.
The annual exhibition and carnival. We displayed live feed from the satellite Ekran, and kept a small sign board, "LIVE FROM SATELLITE".
One visitor looked keenly into the TV Screen, the dish the reciever.. and asked.. is this really live? we replied in unison - "Yes sir.. this is live". He was still doubtful ".....that means this man on the coconut tree preparing toddy, is he still  on coconut tree right now?"

THE INFLUX

I always amazed by the term "Conander " from my childhood days. Later, I postulated, it is the result of the symbiosis of two words, Connoisseur and Commander. I use this term with this meaning; giving utmost respect.

The first few months of Asianet went without much action, except for the small things I mentioned earlier. Then started the "Influx of the Conanders" led by Hon. M.D, Sri. Sivasankaran, followed by Sri. M.Ajayan, Sri. V. Krishnakumar,  Sri. Balagopalan, Sri. B.G Menon, Sri. Radhakrishnan et al. All had some links with Alind or SILK.

The first day of Hon. M.D in the office was a disaster.

M.D was staying at Southpark Hotel, on a temporary basis. The office arranged for M.D in Charutha was on the first floor. To make his day the most comfortable, the fan in the room was replaced with a split AC. Plus all new paraphernalia on his desk.

Before M.D Entered the room, AC was switched on. The moment he sat on the chair, AC stalled. MD in his grey safari suit sat there drenched in sweat,while we tried to make it run.

Finally, some one found out, the external unit of the AC was covered firmly with polythene sheet, to protect it from sunlight and rain!!! Good foresight by a good samaritan.

The polythene sheet was removed and AC switched on, the the machine started with a loud roar (the fan was on max) and all gadgets on the table flew in the air, including the cheap Aluminium Ash-tray.

 Hope the admin guys learned a lesson  for their rest of the lifetime that day, for buying such materials.

Sivasharkaran Sir's woes didnot end there. The worst was the telephone. The extension phone given to him worked between him and Rachana only; i.e, no outside calls. He had to come down to reception everytime Rachana paged him.

Suddenly Charutha become a place of activity, with all rooms occupied. We, the technologists had to spend days either on the road doing survey, or at Edappazhanji looking for satellites or the backyard  of Charutha, licking lactogen and watching the birds.

24+2=24?

The centre of attraction at Trivandrum during the initial months of Asianet was the humongus Dish Antena at Edappazhanji, located near the service station of Mr. Pradeep. Even before he signed-up for franchisee, he had given the room above the service centre and its terrace at the disposal of Asianet. With a rack with few satellite recievers, TV and VCR's and 30 feet above MLL (Mean Land Level), it was the ideal place for our R&D.

The 24 feet dish was installed by Karthik, the well-known company in Madras (Now Chennai). Later, it was demolished and replaced by one supplied by Corwire. The Antenna was supposed to deliver 5 channels, such as Star Plus, Prime Sports, Star News, MTV and Mandarin (Chinese) channel. But even after posting one person on the antenna to fine tune the LNB, the MTV came out with sparkles. We cut all the coconut trees infront of the Dish. Even we tried to link LNB to the reciever using QR540 cable, still sparkles ate parts of  VJ Rubi's and VJ Sofia's body.

So came the new idea > expand the dish to 26 feet.

When the idea is from the think-tanks, it must be perfect. So corewire engineers brought mesh and ribs measuring 1 feet, and attached it over the outer rim and made it a perfect 26 feet dish. Some sceptics mumoured in silence, 24+2=24, not 26. Fools!!!.

 Although the think-tanks announced that the noice level has reduced by 3dB, it was not identifiable by the lay-man's naked eyes. So we decided not to transmit MTV live. Ramesh and team copied MTV at Vadakara SAS and couriered the VHS cassettes to Trivandrum everyday.

Customers blamed MTV and Manorama  for publishing wrong program charts in " Innathe Paripaadikal".

Rekha Menon Joins the Un-employed Group

We, the technologists usually go straight to the first floor of Charutha, after casting attendance with Rachana. We go to the kitchen for an extra tea, or to chat with the "ground guys" such as Biju, Gireesh, Swami etc. Prasanna Madam was always busy, and considered us as "jus kids."

One day, while going to kitchen, we saw a girl, drooping down on the table and writing something in Malayalam. Keeping our muscles tight, we went out of kitchen and had tea on the open back-yard. Then appears the same girl... may be one of the tallest and thinnest   I have ever seen .In typical Trichur accent, she introduced herself as Rekha Menon, Daughter of Sunny Menon..  now joined as production executive. Now assisting Mohanan Sir (N. Mohanan). He had given her a task to review the entries in a Drama festival held last week... within few minutes she become the centre of gravity of Charutha office.

Although there were other "Communications" people in Charutha, such as Kottukappalli, Chintha Ravi, Menon Sir, Sujamol etc, they used to keep a distance from us, the Satcom people. But Rekha used to mingle with us  and often got firing from Mohanan sir for delayed dead-lines. One of the passions introduced by Rekha was, smuggling Lactogen from kitchen and eating it raw at the back-yard.