Grandmother and her TV

I’ve been home in Bombay less than 24 hours. Of these, I was sleeping for 8 and out of the house for 6. And in the remaining time that I have been in the house, I’ve managed to get majorly cheesed off at the grandmother and her TV. The woman (no disrespect to her and all that) watches all the crap there is on TV. She starts as soon as dad leaves for work (which is around 9am) and stops only for an afternoon siesta which lasts about an hour – and this nap is perfectly timed so that she wakes up for round two of bad TV shows. And you know what is worse than her watching her saas-bahu shows all day? She watches the same episode every time it airs. Which means, at least 3 times. Is it any wonder that she is always watching TV?

And for someone who hates physical activity of any sort, her fingers move rather quickly when she is changing channels, jumping from one to the other, avoiding commercial breaks and keeping track of some 5 story lines at the same time. It’s amazing how she manages it. Of course, to give her credit, she doesn’t discriminate. So she watches comedy shows as happily as she watches the sob stories, and does so across all the various hindi language channels, not seeming to favour any one. And if we (her grandchildren or her son) do manage to bully her into giving up the remote control to us, she doesn’t grumble or complain or sulk. She stopped doing that several years back when she realised we weren’t going to give in to her pretend sniffs. Now all she does is struggle to her feet and go into the bedroom to continue watching her soaps. Making sure she locks the door behind her.