Don’t worry. This is not a self-righteous lecture or anything to stop watching the TV or something. It’s an attempt to show you how I regularly try and destroy my life every once in a while when I start watching TV. My TV and I – we have a love-hate relationship. There are some weeks when I will watch it every single day but it is well known to family and friends that I can also go for months without watching TV at all.

Watching Indian soaps is something I really don’t like to do. Many years ago I had started watching a couple of series and would have major withdrawal symptoms if I didn’t watch the next episode. My life revolved around the timings of these soap operas. If I wasn’t in time to watch them I’d be sullen or have ill feelings towards whatever or whoever was stopping me from catching my daily fix.

There came a time in life when I was so addicted and suffering from insomnia that I’d be up until unearthly hours watching repeats of the previously televised repeats! Yes, that bad! Then I’d give watching TV up completely and do more productive things with my time, and then back to whiling away the hours channel hopping.

The thing with Indian soaps is that for some strange reason they’re addictive. You get a short fix and that’s it – you will want to know what’s going to happen next and before you know it you’re living the lives of the characters. Some of these Indian soaps have storylines that border on stupid. Seriously! When I’d be watching I’d sit there yelling at the characters what they should do and how they should react and because they’re so busy being so dumb and not listening to me, my blood pressure would rise and I’d have massive headaches.

Then I went through a phase of watching series. I’d get whole seasons of different series and not budge at all from in front of the idiot box. It started with Desperate Housewives and then I moved on to House and now I’m in love with Mentalist. And here is proof that I need medical help. While watching the series Mentalist, I decided to Google and find out who Red John the killer is. I still have six episodes of Mentalist left to watch but there’s no fun in them anymore. I used to do this as a kid too. I’d get a book to read and halfway through I’d be reading the end just to see if I was right about whodunit.

So you see, watching TV can prove to be injurious to my health. There are times when I go months without paying the subscriptions for the pay-TV. My kids get severely disturbed at this because they can’t watch their favourite cartoons all day long so when the December holidays rolled up last year, they very sneakily went to my Dad and used some passive aggressive techniques by telling him how bored they were and how Mummy doesn’t get the TV reconnected and how sad and droll their life is and guess what… it worked. Dad paid up for six whole months for our TV subscription and the kids were the happiest ever.

Allow me to rant about the kids TV and the content of their so-called cartoons,soon. It is truly a story for another day and right now I need to finish watching the third season of Mentalist to see if the guy they showed on youtube is the one they call Red John.

I need a life!