story of india

There was a time up until 6-7 yrs back when i was infatuated with the BBC and its content. i am pretty sure that i could it put it down to IQ busting quality of programming on other Indian channels. I also couldn't stand reruns of some version or the other of the wildebeest migration on Discovery/NatGeo. I didn't need these guys to tell me we were related to the gorillas/chimps/monkeys and other simian species.... i had the guys at NDTV as living proof. any more 24hr new channels, and i would have cost my dad a new tv every week. I have since seen these news channels track their way back from the monkeys to even more slimier lifeforms. darwin would have rejoiced seeing this reverse engineering at work. now back to BBC.. i was in awe of their production quality and depth of their programming material. there was never a 2 hr special. they were always a minimum of 6 one-hour productions. and i absolutely loved their narrative style. the english had their own charm which i found missing in the american productions. if anyone wants to watch "planet earth", i suggest you pick up the BBC version presented by Sir Attenborough. there were many such documentaries that made my sunday afternoons, like the wonderful Seven Ages of Rock and the dark and sad, The Nazis. The second one in fact gave me enough material to give a small presentation that made the girls in my class take note of my existence :).

But after moving out of home i neither had access to the Beeb nor sadly the time. Last week i came across a series titled "The Story of India" at a torrent exchange and downloaded it. It was produced by the Beeb as part of 60yr celebrations of Indian independence. Presented by the celebrity historian Michael Wood, it traces India's history right from the Harappan times to the Independence movement. It was a fairly engaging commentary and was typical of an Indophile's romantic notion of the region. i had my own share of the quibbles with some of the stuff but i did learn some interesting things. like there is a library in tanjore which is older than the Congressional library in the US and that the Cholas were sea faring people whose empire stretched as far as Cambodia. I was also surprised to learn that Buddha ate meat and he died falling sick after eating bad pork. There was a bit about the East India Company having made 13 million pounds a year back in the 1800's and i almost lost my breath at that number. i am pretty sure that number is north of a billion dollars factoring in inflation over 2 centuries!!! Moving over to my peeves, there was a bit that questioned whether the vedic mantras were pre-language vocal sounds rather than words. I am no theist or cultural romantic, but to know that this assumtion was thrown out there based on the work of one graduate student was disappointing. the beeb should know better. there wasn't much information about where the dravidians had come from either. but the one thing that angered me the most was the continuing English hard headedness at refusing to acknowledge the death toll at Jallianwala Bagh. Here again they say that it was around 400. It is hard to believe that 1650 rounds fired in a matter of 10mins in such a narrow area had resulted in only so few casualties. but then again fighting over numbers seems a bit shallow.

overall it was a good watch... nice way to spend a rainy saturday evening.!!

shri