Do You Remember Shaktimaan?

The taandh ran the full length of the wall, corner to corner, and the television sat right on it, a curtain hanging in front, kept closed most days. Coming back, not from school, from tuition, pulling the curtain aside and fixing the antenna was always the first thing to happen.

It was one of those antennas with several long rods, mounted on the roof, and you had to keep turning it from below until the picture cleared. We were living in a rented place in Budhpur, Delhi, at the time. A color CRT set, heavy, resting right there on the taandh.

The show started at six, right around when I'd get back from tuition. My mother would be starting dinner around the same time. My father wouldn't be back from the factory till after nine, so it was just the two of us in the house at that hour, my sister still too small to understand any of it. This was somewhere between 2001 and 2003. Sometimes homework happened right alongside it too, half my attention on the book, half on the screen.

The moment that theme started, something shifted in the room. I don't remember the words properly anymore, but the tune still plays somewhere inside. And that spinning sound, shook shook shuk shuk shuk, whenever he turned in place, I can still hear it clearly whenever I think back to it.

There was Gangadhar, glasses on, looking a little odd, nobody ever recognized him. And Tamraj Kilvish, who used to say darkness shall prevail, in that voice of his, so different from anyone else's. Back then I just assumed he lived somewhere in the dark, permanently. And Geeta Vishwas too, always chasing after him.

At the end of every episode, Shaktiman would give some kind of advice, looking straight into the camera. One I remember, why cleaning the house matters, dusting the fans, small things like that. It genuinely felt like he was talking directly to me.

Friends had his picture on their school bags, on pencil boxes too, some kids even dressed up as him for fancy dress day, red costume, the chakra symbol on the chest. I liked all of that too, but what I remember most is still that one hour, the taandh, the curtain, the antenna, the smell of dinner starting in the kitchen, and that exact moment the theme began.

I genuinely don't remember what actually happened to Tamraj Kilvish in the end, how he was defeated. Maybe I never watched the final episodes, or it just didn't stay with me. Years ago there was news that the show was coming back, some new version, but it never actually did.

I rewatched a few episodes recently, as an adult, and one thought kept coming back, how did nobody figure out that Gangadhar was Shaktiman, it's just a pair of glasses. It seems so obvious now. But back then, it was completely, entirely believed.

Do you have a specific memory of your own, maybe from one particular episode, or something that happened at home with your family while it was playing, that's stayed with you? Drop it in the comments below, let other visitors know too.