THE IDIOT AND THE BOX

It was the day my friend was having a big bash to celebrate his first TV, and the new Tata Sky connection. “DTH cometh, it’s finally time to make life ‘Jhinga la la’”, read the SMS he’d sent around. “See you at 10 am sharp, Sunday” it had concluded.
The blessed Sabbath dawned. I woke up, as usual, at 10:30, and lazily crossed the street to his pad.
I walked in, and my senses were assaulted by the loud electronic voices of people chattering on TV. No human voices to speak of.
I wade through the hall into the room housing the latest bit of gadgetry to grace his 4 walls, and behold my friend watching TV… all alone. Packets of junk food – some full, some empty – played the role of a carpet. Crumbs of potato wafers, biscuits, popcorn kernels, interspersed with empty coke bottles made up the detailing… I felt lucky I hadn’t kicked off my footwear.
“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” I asked. “Got bored, went home,” came the reply. His eyes never leave the screen. My puzzled expression was lost on him. So I put it into words: “Why? What happened? Something wrong with the TV or nothing interesting on air?”

“Oh, lots of great stuff’s on… but we couldn’t watch anything completely.”

His eyes still haven’t left the screen. I realize I’m screaming to make myself heard. The remote’s lying next to him, beside to a limp arm. But I dare not pad up to the screen and touch the knobs there, lest I irritate him.
But strangely, he’s not feeling bad that he’s alone… but it’s a question that’s been niggling me for a while now:
“So they came, they ate, and they left?”
“No. None of them wanted to eat.”
“So you ate all that by yourself?”
“Hmmmm.”
“Dude, how much of that stuff did you eat?”
“Pshawfghhhhh.”
“That’s not a word, man. You feeling ok?”
“Grmbhhhhhh”
“What?”
He turns his head… looks at me… turns back to the TV… sighs…. Lifts up the remote and switches it off… turns back to me…

“Huh?”
“Did you eat all that junk?”
“Yeah, the others didn’t want anything.”
“But there must be 700 bucks worth of junk food on the floor.”
“850, actually.”
“So what happened to the other guys?”
“Yeah, see there’s only one TV, so we couldn’t decide on something everyone wanted to watch. There’s only 1 remote, and we couldn’t decide who should control it. So they all pushed off.”
“Oh....... So I guess I’ll go too then, let you watch what you want. Sorry I disturbed you.”
“Naah man, it’s cool. The ad break’s over…. I’ll turn it on in 5 minutes…”
“You’re watching ads?”
“Yeah," he says matter-of-factly. "A movie interrupts them only once in 15-20 minutes, and that’s just for 5 minutes or so.”
I can’t believe my ears: “So you switch the thing off when the movie starts?”
“No, flip channels.”

He looks at his watch, turns back to the TV, and click’s it on again.