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?"
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?"
:) Thanks again Jaya.
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of "what hurricane had said to the coconut tree the other day"..."hold on to your nuts, this is no ordinary blow job":)))
Keep it coming buddy...
Thank Steve for the punch-line.
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