Harking back: First TV station, Aslam Azhar and the ‘Cosmos’ series

Every day my wife watches television dramas before sleeping, which is invariably followed by a deep serious discussion about the plot, the actors and the twists and turns of the storyline, mostly on the mobile phone across the seas. This makes my mind go back to my school days when the first television station came to Lahore.

That day was 58 years ago, just before the September 1965 War broke out and over Lahore’s Regal Crossing a ‘dogfight’ among opposing jet fighters was witnessed by the entire population. An aircraft was hit and the entire population rushed westwards to see the fallen pilot, presuming that it was of the opposing side. I recall an old man pontificating: “Oh, the poor pilot will be severely beaten up”. In the evening news on radio and the new black and white TV screen, it was announced that the aircraft was of the ‘dushman’ (enemy). Screams of delight rang across the skies as the entire city, and country, was on an unprecedented hype.

As my father was then the Editor of ‘The Civil & Military Gazette’, Lahore, we were among the first 200 persons to be blessed with a black and white TV set. People from the neighbourhood used to flock to our house to see this wonder invention where people in a box actually moved and spoke. Initially, the TV showed, in black and white, small fish swimming in a small tank. That was it and every time a fish turned there was clapping.

But then this new wonder box began to switch on to a series of programmes that still remain unforgettable. One says this because if those series were repeated today, it might make people think in a scientific rational manner. My dear friend Dr Hasan Shah, the highly-rated Pakistani physicist, keeps supplying me … and his friends … with science stories on the internet. His rationality is so refreshing.

A few days ago he sent a piece on Paul Sagan and his ‘Cosmos’ television series in which he recalled the mathematician Eratosthenes of Cyrene in Libya, who died in Egypt as the Chief Librarian of Alexandria, who for the first time, using examples of experiments, proved that the Earth was a globe and was round. His experiment was simple.

He calculated the time it takes for sunlight to reach the bottom of two wells in different cities, and using simple trigonometry he calculated that the circumference was 24,662 miles. Naturally, the priestly classes condemned him, just like they have over time condemned other scientists, just as our moon committee members refuse to listen to scientific arguments.

But the ‘Cosmos’ series of Paul Sagan, the American astronomer and science communicator, changed the very way the world saw the lessons of science. His quotation that: “Opportunities do not happen, you create them” for the first time saw television viewers sit up and watch each and every one of his ‘Cosmos’ episodes. The world of science and rational thinking penetrated the houses of almost every viewer, and if any person was mainly responsible for a change in our wonderment, it was Carl Sagan.

One of his quotations that we listened to as schoolchildren, still lives in our minds, and that was: “The sum total of knowledge mankind has collected since the beginning of time, doubles every eleven year”. It just showed us how much there was and is to do, an unending search for the truth. In a ‘cosmic’ sort of way the truth lies within the possible, only that learning and experimentation is the way forward. Just as the ragged little ‘mohallah’ boys sat in our house before our black and white TV set watching with amazement, so it was, for them, the beginning of wonderment, of trying to reach for the sky.

It would be absolutely amazing if our scores of television channels could convert that, and other similar, series into a ‘colour’ versions, and let Pakistanis wonder about the world in which we live. Over the last 40 years as Pakistan has regressed into a world based on belief, with an image of an ancient remote desert dwelling as a role model, we are moving far away from rational thinking.

You might ask just what did Paul Sagan himself achieve? Besides his discovery of the temperatures of the surface of Venus, Mars and Jupiter, his other works have been the backbone on which NASA has based its moon and space flights. He actually helped reach for the sky. How many schoolchildren know this, let alone adults.

The Lahore television station was inaugurated on the 26th of November, 1964, thanks to the efforts of a gentleman called Mr Aslam Azhar. Probably our new generation has never heard of this amazing man. The scores of people he collected to work in the small studio based to one side of Lahore’s Radio Pakistan building, helped him start a revolution that has now reached each and every household in the country.

Officially 135 people out of 1,000 have a television set. The average household of seven persons’ means 945 persons out of every 1,000 have access to a TV set. Once while researching on gypsies on the banks of the River Ravi it was surprising to see them enjoying a TV programme sitting in their tent. The little gypsies knew which programme comes when and on which channel. Such is its sweep, and as Carl Sagan said: “For thinking people to hold back knowledge is a criminal act on mankind”.

All these facts were in my mind when once two years ago I gave a talk on ‘Lahore: the city of literature’ at my alma mater – the Government College of Lahore – where the talk was preceded by a very long religious recitation, followed by an equally long “Na’at” by a student dressed as a Chitrali lady, followed by the VC giving an almost equally long sermon on Allama Iqbal the Ravian, whose pictures are pasted all over the place. It provoked me to start my talk in chaste Lahori Punjabi with a joke about Iqbal, his ‘sitar’ and his Sikh friend.

It seems comic relief is the only way to break into a serious discussion. Restoring rational thinking helps a lot. The lessons of Sagan, or for that matter David Attenborough and his ‘nature’ programmes, and of the thousands of other subjects and scientists of the present and the years gone by need to be recalled - be it in black and white for starters. Jinnah wanted a fifth of our resources dedicated to educating the poor. What went wrong?

NOTE: Last week I wrote about Dr Kevin the Cambridge archivist who visited Lahore. The correct spelling of his name is Greenbank. He also does not wish to be quoted as criticising any country, even indirectly, or commit on funds of any sort. Understandable.