[An episode from 3 months back.]
Finally after serving us for close to 10 years, our TV died on us last week.
This one was from the generation that did not require a prefix to identify it – it was just a TV. The regular old, bulky CRT TV.
I didn’t realize I had feelings for it until it died on me – I am surprised at the grief I am feeling. For a TV.
My TV was good. I have never had to take it for repairs.
Of course, it has misbehaved at times. But 2 things have helped us (my TV and me) overcome those troubled times: 1) my being a fully qualified Electronics engineer, and 2) my being handed down the single most important equipment fixing technique from my father.
The former aspect has equipped me with the skills to tell a diode from a transistor (I had successfully demonstrated this to my visiting lab examiner in my eighth semester Viva voce too), and the wisdom that a TV has many more components than just these 2 items. So I have never tried to mess with the internals.
The second, more important aspect, is the one that has fixed the niggles really. And I am going to pass this on to you now. So take a pen and note this down if you need to.
Let’s say you have a misbehaving equipment you want looked into. You take it to my father; an accountant by profession. He takes his time to examine the object from various angles. And then, finding the most appropriate spot, goes: slam! bam! – He gives it a nice whack. The next you know, your equipment has come out of coma!
I have seen him do this with all kinds of broken items in my house:
TV Remote dead? Slam! bam!
A stubborn bottle cap? Slam! bam!
A stuck bicycle pedal? Slam! bam!
It just works. Go ahead, try it at home.
But this time … this time, even the slam! bam! technique failed to revive my TV. I banged my TV from front to back, side to side. All it gave me was a blank screen – I drew a blank.
I realized I couldn’t hold out any longer – it was finally time to switch over to new technology. I visited the electronic superstores only to find that they no longer carried the affordable, bulky, good old CRT TVs. They were all gone!
All I saw were flat TVs – the world had gone flat! Nandanless, I decided to go ahead and get one.
The choices were confusing: Plasma, LED, LCD, HD, UHD, Smart Motion, 3D … the list went on. Walking behind me, the store assistant went on blabbering (Centerfruit style) about the features of each TV as we passed them. Thoroughly confused and helpless, I asked him to recommend me a TV that would expand my experiences and enrich my lifestyle. He pointed me to a Panasonic LED model, and that now sits proudly in my entertainment center.
And oh, there still are people who use CRT TVs? How do they manage? Country fellows!