Hyderabad: Mohd Abdul Ishaq sits in his 30-year-old shop, surrounded by television sets from different eras of entertainment, blissfully repairing machines. If one were to peek into his store, it would feel like stepping back in time when televisions were an important medium of information.
In a small ten-by-eight-foot store located on the Puranapul-Karwan road, one of the oldest routes existing since the Golconda era (1518-1687) that is dotted with heritage monuments, sits Mohd Abdul Ishaq repairing old television sets.
Black and white and colour television sets dating back to the 1990s and early 2000s are scattered around in his shop, which his family has been running for over 30 years now.
Ishaq is one among the handful of electronic goods technicians who continue to repair radios, tape recorders and cathode ray tube television sets mainly.
Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Television sets were widely used during the 1980s and 1990s, and were considered a luxury as some households owned one until those became more common after the late 1990s. Television sets manufactured by Solitaire, Dyanora, Onida, Videocon, etc, were some of the most famous ones available.
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The family that owned television sets were at one time even courteous enough to allow neighbours to gather at their house and watch the limited content that aired through television studios. It was only in the 2000s that cable TV became easily available, and shows were available 24 hours.
Apart from televisions, Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) and Video Cassette Player (VCP) also offered unlimited opportunities for entertainment.
Although the CRT Television sets have been largely replaced by lighter, thinner, and more efficient alternatives like LCD, LED, and OLED TVs, some families in the city still use the CRT television sets and visit Ishaq’s workshop to get television sets repaired.
“People bring in their old CRT television sets and get them repaired because they want to continue using them. It takes a lot of time to identify the snag. New generation television repair persons don’t touch the old TVs, considering it a time-consuming task,” said Mohd Abdul Ishaq, who also repairs tape recorders and radios.
In the Bibi ka Chasma locality in the south end of Hyderabad’s Old City, Mohd Yousuf, another television technician, continues with the CRT television sets. Yousuf, now in his late 50s, took up the profession in his late 20s and continues with it. “In slum localities, people still use the CRT TV sets. There is a second-hand market for it too. In LED TVs you just have to replace an accessory, but in CRT TV you need to identify the fault and rectify it. It’s not an easy task,” said Yousuf.
Five years from now, they will be a part of history unless they switch over to repairing advanced television sets. “The television technicians have learned the technicalities of the new LED and other television sets. The market for CRT TV will come down after five years as people are now preferring to buy a new television rather than spending money on getting their old TV repaired,” said Yousuf.
