|
Going live on Sivarathri
Sai Ram, Dear
Reader!
I hope you are aware
that this year, the Sivarathri proceedings were telecast live in
India for three hours, from 5 PM to 8 PM. The editorial in an
earlier issue made a mention of this. It was an amazing
experience, considering that none of us have had any experience of
this sort thing before. But then, that is the way things happen in
Swami’s Mission.
The
idea of a live telecast took root some months earlier when an
effort was made to webcast, in a limited way that is, the last day
of the Dasara proceedings. That is
the day when the seven-day Yajna is
brought to a grand finale in the Poorna
Ahuti function. This webcast was not really done by us but
by another group, and we merely provided a camera signal. The
webcast was quite limited in scope, and to just the city of
Madras/Chennai, where thousands of devotees gathered in the Sai
Centre Sundaram saw live what was going on.
Came Birthday, and
by now we were in the picture. This time, we taped the function,
and later did a webcast in the evening for devotees in Sundaram,
Madras, and subsequently to the US where the webcast was seen by
many groups there. Of course it was a delayed webcast, but the
viewers saw it within hours of the event and at a convenient time
too, that is in the evening.
One
more practice round of web streaming to the US and this was during
Christmas. This too went off well. So much so, when Prof David
Gries of Cornell University came here in early January for his
annual stint of teaching in Swami’s Institute, we got together and
worked out a road map for starting regular streaming service
internationally, even as we now have international radio streaming
service.
By this time, the
Sivarathri fever was mounting, and Mr. Gopal Srinivasan who
through his continued munificence has been driving many of our
technical developments said: “Listen, you are already telecasting
three times a week a TV program called SPIRITUAL BLOSSOMS FROM
PRSHANTI NILAYAM on Sanskar TV channel. It is quite popular and
eagerly looked forward to by thousands all across the country. Why
not go live on SR day? In fact, we must!” One thing led to another
and Gopal sought the Divine blessing, which was given. From that
moment, there was no turning back.
So what does a live
telecast mean and what arrangements did we have to make? Quite a
lot. First and foremost, we had to line up four cameras to cover
the scene. Fortunately, we now have four good digital cameras and
we
managed to identify four choice locations that would enable us to
have good video coverage. Next, we had to pipe the signals to a
central control centre, complete with monitors. Seated at the
control centre were three persons, one of whom was the Director.
The second person controlled the video mixing and the third
controlled the audio level. This was not enough. We had to provide
a talk-back system so that everyone could communicate with
everyone else. This was a hands-free system, the sort pilots wear
while piloting an aircraft; that is to say, there are headphones,
and a small attached mike. The Control system was established
inside the Mandir, yes, the place where normally we have Bhajans,
with Swami sitting in His chair. On an earlier occasion, to be
precise on Birthday of 2002, we did a live radio broadcast over
Radio Sai. On that day too we had set up our control facilities
[much smaller than this time] inside the Mandir. And you know
what? After the morning functions were over, Swami suddenly came
inside the Mandir and He was quite surprised to see a whole lot
chaps who normally are not found there! There was a sort of
quizzical look in His eyes, and He just walked away. We were all
terribly scared! So this time, I took the precaution of telling
Swami several times in advance that we would be working from
inside the Mandir. Not only that, we all had special photo-badges
that said in big bold letters: MANDIR DUTY.
The
arrangements did not stop here, and there were a number of other
things that had to be done. We had already laid a fibre-optic line
from the Mandir to our nerve centre in the IT Centre [we have
described the inauguration of the IT Centre in an earlier issue of
H2H]. This cable would carry the composite audio-video computer
signal to the IT Centre, from where it would go by a leased 2 MBPS
line to Bangalore. This line is available to us all the time and
used by many here. However, for this function, we blocked all
other users at our end.
Bangalore was not
our destination but Bombay/Mumbai. Sanskar does its uplink in
Bombay, to the THAICOM satellite, which then beams the signal down
on the country. So we had to lease a 2 MBPS line from Bangalore to
Bombay. Thus, our signal was supposed to go from Prashanti Nilayam
first to Bangalore and thence from there to Bombay.
All this sounds very
simple and straight forward on paper but in practice, it turned
out to be quite tricky. The first thing we realised was that when
a service provider says that he is offering a 2 MBPS line, we
ought not to take it literally; there is a lot of fine print, and
in actual practice the throughput turns out to be much lower. We
could not get anything more than 500 KBPS, which meant that the
picture quality would take a beating. We discovered this to our
horror while doing some preliminary trials. It was just about 10
days or so to D Day, and we had not yet established a firm link to
Bombay. By the way, we from Prashanti Digital Studio were doing
all the ground work here in Prashantinilayam, while Mr. Ramesh
Babu, a senor associate of Mr. Gopal Srinivasan, did all the
technical liaison at the uplink station in Bombay. Here I should
not forget to mention the excellent logistic support given to
Ramesh by devotees in Dharmakshetra – without the Sainet, the
internet is nothing!
OK,
we were bowled out in the first round on this link from Bangalore
to Bombay. How did we come through? This is where the yeoman work
done by Ramesh needs special mention. He huddled with the
technical experts of the service provider, and arranged what was
constantly referred to as a “tunnel” on the communication link.
Frankly, I don’t quite know what this tunnel is but believe me, it
sure did make us see the proverbial light at the end of the
tunnel!
The clock was
ticking and we were inching towards D Day. While things were
generally under control back here, there was still a lot of
nail-biting going on regarding the Bangalore-Bombay link.
Tests were being
done all the time, and slowly our figure crept up to 1 MBPS and
thence on to 1.2MBPS audio signal included. We were streaming
video signals all the time from Prashanti Studio to Bombay and
found that 1.2 MBPS was the best we could get. It was a
take-it-or-leave-it situation. We just grabbed it – no other
choice, since the expectations of viewers had been raised sky
high. What about picture quality? Not bad; quite good; not the
very best but OK.
Three days before D
day, at midnight, a 20 minute program on tape was streamed from
our Studio and actually telecast! This was a trial. We taped the
program as received in TV receiver, and things seemed to be OK. We
were now beginning to feel more confident.
D Day minus one,
that is, Tuesday, 17th February. On Tuesdays, there is a regular
Sanskar telecast of our program at 9 PM. We had already sent the
digital tape for this program to Sanskar TV ten days earlier [by
courier] but decided to try out a live telecast from our studio.
It was done but there were one or two minor glitches. One of these
had to do with getting the proper signal from Bombay for us to
switch on and come on the air. To be more precise, the countdown
procedure we had adopted earlier was forgotten! The glitches were
minor but they taught us a lesson for the next day.
Finally, the big day
was here! From three days or rather nights before this, our boys
and several people here who were helping, were slogging, and
believe me it was truly hectic. For not only were we telecasting
live but we were also providing video viewing in and around the
Sai Kulwant Hall. We had established 120 TV monitors on CCTV
network so that everyone in every nook and corner of Sai Kulwant
Hall could watch the proceedings comfortably. Besides this, four
big screens had been set up to enable people gathered on roads
also to watch. All this was done to prevent the crowd surges that
were witnessed in earlier years. It was a lot of work but it paid
off. One elderly lady whom I met after the event said that thanks
to CCTV she was able to sit comfortably in the Poornachandra Hall
and witness the proceedings – yes there were 20 monitors in the PC
Hall too! By Swami’s Grace we were able to offer this unique
service which has never been done before. What I am trying to
convey is that there was a lot we had to do and there was
practically no rest during the preceding four days and nights –
they were absolutely hectic. Please understand, we had to work
within very restricted slots, that is, a couple of hours in the
afternoon between end of morning Darshan and commencement of
evening Darshan. And that meant, most of the work had to be done
at night.
Oh yes, I should not
forget to mention that we had to set up a TV antenna on top of the
Mandir. This was a tricky business because Mandir access is highly
restricted especially on account of security. Finally, we got the
antenna and the receiver going at 1 AM on Tuesday morning! By the
way, connecting 120 TV sets by cable is no joke; one crew was
working on this for three nights, for that is when they could
work. I hope all this gives you some idea of the slogging that has
to go on in the background.
Finally,
D Day! The morning function was over and it was announced that the
evening function would commence at 4 PM. We were all in the Mandir
by 2 PM, tense, anxious and biting our nails, figuratively that
is! Though we were to go on air at 5 PM, we started the streaming
trials from 3 PM itself just to make sure all the necessary
adjustments at the Bombay end could be done in advance. This was
one of the lessons we had learnt from earlier trials. We had
mobiles all over the place and were in constant touch with Bombay.
We worked out a count down procedure – 30 seconds before air time,
a person from Bombay would tell us, “You will be on air 30 seconds
from now.” At 20 seconds he would say, “20 seconds to go!”
Meanwhile, we were watching the regular Sanskar program on a TV
tuned to receive that channel. Imagine that! A TV set inside the
Mandir!! We had to keep an eye on our monitors also.
There was a slightly
tricky element here. You see that though TV signals travel with
the speed of light, there is a 10 second delay in the conversion
of our camera signal into a computer signal ready for
transmission. Thus our signal reaches Bombay 10 seconds after our
cameras produce them. Next, at Bombay end there is another delay
of 10 seconds before our signal goes through the computer there to
the satellite. So, in the end, there is a 20 second between what
people in SK hall see and what people see on their TV screens. We
had to keep that in mind. In other words, we had to start 20
seconds before the preceding TV program ended. By Swami’s Grace
and mobile phones and all that, we did it perfectly, and the net
result was there was absolutely no blank screen. When the previous
TV program ended, ours came on just like that! Boy, were we
relieved!
The story does not
quite end here; in fact this is where it really begins. What did
we show? Well, we did not exactly cut to SK Hall; we had a nice
prologue that introduced the viewer to what Sivarathri is all
about, the spiritual significance, the folklores associated with
it etc. Also some vintage shots from yesteryears. All this was for
about 20 minutes.
At the end of the prologue, the commentators took over and we cut
to SK Hall to show the proceedings as they were taking place
there. We had an old student of ours who took care of the English
commentary while for Hindi we had two persons. We deliberately
gave a lot of importance to Hindi because we had a huge segment of
viewers in the North where Hindi is understood better. The Hindi
commentary was handled by a devotee and a professional sent us to
from Bombay.
While we were on
air, we had to constantly be alert, not only with respect to the
telecast but also with respect to local problems. For example,
soon after went on air, we discovered that despite all earlier
trials and setting adjustments, the sound as received on the TV
receiver was not good; there was some jarring sound. So Bombay had
to be informed and adjustments made there. I had to run here and
there and cueing people as needed. Especially with respect to the
commentary, I had to signal these people what to say and when. The
commentators were a bit uncomfortable to start with because they
had to sit on the floor and there was a terrific ambient noise
from the Public Address system. But we had to live with it. But
this was not the end of our problem. People walked in and out of
the Mandir as they pleased. For example just after Swami left,
which was at about 7 PM, a large number of people started coming
into the Mandir. They all wanted to worship there! I had a tough
time keeping them out. They just would not understand that we were
doing a live telecast and needed quiet! Almost everyone looked
daggers at me even while I tried to function like a bouncer!
Finally, I managed to bolt the door but my problems were not over;
the Chief Minister of one State who had come was now making his
exit and his Security wanted to use the Mandir as the gateway. So
all these gun-toting chaps had to be let through!
OK,
were our problems over? By no means! The moment Swami left, people
just started getting up and leaving. I mean, how could we show
thousands getting out! What would people outside think? This is
where forward planning helped. We had ready, stuff taped from the
morning. We just switched to that and the commentators were now
allowed to have a field day. They were now in their elements and
enjoyed every minute of it.
What about the
high-point, that is, the Lingodbhavam? Well, we had done a lot of
planning about that. We had arranged for each cameraman to send
his tape immediately after the event to the control room. Here we
were supposed to do the replay. Unfortunately since we did not
have proper tape recorders, we used DV Cameras for that purpose,
four of them! But it worked, and people all over the country saw
the Lingodbhavam replays several times, in slow motion too.
A couple of juicy
stories! During the telecast, one person came running from the SK
Hall screaming, “CCTV off in our sector! Do something
immediately!!” Crisis management! We sent a person and he found
that when a fat devotee sat on it, the cable snapped! So the cable
had to be repaired on the spot. Lesson – bury the cable! Hope to
do that this summer when Swami is away!
Another incident.
Suddenly, just before start of the afternoon proceedings, we hear
that a team from a reputed TV news channel was here and had been
permitted to video tape the event. We had worked out with security
a spot for them to shot from. But you know what? These media
people [there was one more from Delhi] are not only professional
but very used to having their own way. So, they came, and said,
“We don’t like this spot,” came to where our camera was, and just
moved it aside! It was like a Western and we were getting pushed
around in our own backyard! I had to rush and do some mediation,
practicing all the virtues taught by Swami – this is when bookish
knowledge had to be quickly translated into practical knowledge!
There were happier
moments too. While the telecast was going on, one person came to
me and said, “Sir, every shop in the village is showing the
program and thousands are watching”. Another excitedly told me,
“My wife who is in Calcutta called me just now on the mobile and
told me that it is fantastic.” This was most gratifying.
One
difficult moment. Just after Lingodbhavam, Swami suddenly leaned
forward and for a second it seemed as if He was far from well.
Knowing the anxiety this would cause to viewers, Gene Massey who
was at the Director’s control, quickly switched to another camera
view. Real fast thinking. We of course saw it all but the viewers
in the country saw it for just a fraction of a second; but even
that was enough for it led to so many mails and phone calls.
Anyway, Swami was back in form in just five minutes and continued
His Discourse. After that He sat for Bhajans and left. And you
know what? He made a surprise visit at 1.40 AM. Attendance in the
hall was thin but those who were present, students mostly, sang
with fantastic gusto! There were no mikes and this was the most
robust singing one can ever witness. I have seen this many times.
Boy, do they beat the hell out of the drums to keep everyone
awake?! Swami enjoyed it immensely, and luckily
we have it all on tape.
And so, one more
Sivarathri passes off into history. Perhaps some of you may recall
we offered excerpts from old issues of Sanathana Sarathi in an
earlier issue. Who knows? Decades from now, what you now read may
be offered for devotees of that period in the same fashion!
Shakespeare said,
“All that lives must die, passing from here to Eternity.”
Hemmingway wrote a book with the tile “FROM HERE TO ETERNITY”
which later became a classic movie starring Frank Sinatra,
Montgomery Clift and several others. It also won Oscars I believe.
Why am I bringing
this up? Because, at the basic level, Sivarathri is a reminder of
the journey from here to Eternity. From Eternity we have come
here; now that we are here, we must avoid being trapped here for
eternity through the ‘birth again, death again’ syndrome! The eyes
must be on the Road to Eternity and not on the Road to Bali or
Road to Rio [old timers would know what I mean by this]!
Hope you liked this
feature. Why don’t you write and tell us what you think, even if
it is not favourable?!
Jai Sai Ram.
G.VENKATARAMAN
Source:
Radio Sai
E-Magazine, March 15, 2004
http://media.radiosai.org/Journals/Vol_02/06March15/07_Prasanthi_Diary/PrasanthiDiary.htm
|