Time, Technology and some memories

 

This is a story from 1984. The Olympics that year was at Los Angeles, USA. Then with no TV we had no means to watch the greatest event on the globe. The Indian hockey team had won gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. I still remember the picture in newspapers of the captain V Bhaskaran and his men in jubilation. After four decades India has not won the gold again in men’s hockey. Even the gold at Moscow was from a depleted field with the US and its allies boycotting the event at the height of the cold war.

The event was still in progress and one day the local administration made an announcement that the event will be shown live on a TV set installed at the Thirunakkara Maidanam. The sports lovers of Kottayam could not ask for more. On the day of the hockey match between India and Germany, I and Kuruppachan (C Sreekanta Kurup), then in our twenties reached the maidanam well before the start of the game expecting a big crowd. But there were only very few people, may be less than ten, to watch the match that ended in a goal less draw. After the match was over, two men, in their late seventies came to us and told us that they have been here some forty years before to listen to the radio broadcast for the first time!

Another forty years elapsed. On the 18^th December, 2022, I watched the Football world cup finals on the big screen inside the great hall, CMS college.

In 1940’s those two men listened to the radio broadcast at the Thirunakkara Maidanam. At the very same venue I and Kuruppachan watched the Olympics on the TV on the 6^th august, 1984. Almost forty years later I watched my favourite team Argentina winning and Messi kissing the coveted trophy on the big screen.

Forty years from now, who knows what the technology will be. One thing we can say with certainty is that technology never stops, it keeps galloping and we have to, keep pace with it.