As the World Turns

When my first daughter Rita was born, we were very protective and rarely went out without covering her properly so that she would not catch a cold. We mostly stayed in doors and spent most of our time watching TV as that was the best source of entertainment. As Rita grew, she became very fond of switching the channels and watching all the cartoon channels. In those days there were no digital TV and we had a valve type TV with a huge knob which used to be rotated for increasing or decreasing the volume and another knob for changing the channels. Naturally there was no remote in those days. One day when Rita was 5 years old, we decided to go to a cinema hall to see a movie. Rita had endless questions till the time we reached the cinema hall. On reaching the hall, she was overawed by the size of the screen. The TV screen was the biggest screen she had ever seen. She shouted in glee “Papa such a big TV.” I told her it was not a TV but a movie screen. When the movie started, she suddenly asked in a loud voice, “Papa where is the knob to change the channel?” Everyone around us burst out laughing.