Together, very good; In front of TV, not very good
   Date :28-Feb-2021

loud thinking_1 &nbs
 
By Vijay Phanshikar:
 
THANKS to the conditions thrust upon the larger society by the coronavirus pandemic, countless numbers of families are seen spending their evenings together in front of television. Initially when the lock-down was imposed, people did find creative ways and means to engage themselves in different activities. But soon, television re-asserted itself and was back in the daily time-table with a vengeance.
 
This is not a desirable situation in whatever manner. Nobody would discredit families sitting together and enjoying evenings. But if they are doing that in front of television -- watching programmes that are not necessarily designed for families -- then it should be a matter of deep social concern. It is against that practice of spending hours together in front of television that a word of caution is necessary. A casual survey of how families spend their evenings at home would reveal to us that many of them sit together glued to television. And even when television is on with whatever programme, most members -- except children -- are also engaged with their personal cell-phones doing god-knows-what. There is no actual dialogue among them in a true sense. By any standard, this cannot be considered to be the right way to spending family time in evenings -- after parents’ work is over and everybody has some time at hand to make good use of. But unfortunately, what we see is that families are sitting together physically all right, but are not mentally together since their attention is engaged by television.
 
Occasional watching television is not unwelcome, but countless numbers of families appear to have evolved a culture of sitting together in front of television for hours in the evenings. In countless numbers of families, members have their dinner, too, watching television. There is sitting together all right, but there is no talking together, as their attention is dominated by whatever is being shown on the TV screen.
 
That is not a good idea at all. In fact, that is one idea that needs to be fought back and defeated by developing alternative ways to spend quality time together. Of course, this is an old suggestion which I often pushed through ‘Loud Thinking’ -- of the practice of family conversation at dinner time and story-telling sessions by elders for the youngsters in the family. But I would still bat for it and urge everybody to give a serious thought to the institution of family dinner without television and without individual cell-phones ringing. This is not too much of idealism. Much to the contrary, this is a practical way to introduce in the family something very creative and very wonderful. It is time we rejuvenated the institution of family dinner in all seriousness. That will take us a great distance in togetherness.