To experience this momentous moment, you had to sit through 60 minutes of Swedish. Should Doordarshan have devoted one precious hour of live broadcast time to one son of the soil? Shouldn't it have hired the Swedish Ambassador as a translator?

At a time when the Indian cricket team is being shorn of its glory by a New Zealand district team, when most Indian medal prospects at the Bangkok Asian Games are doing their very best not to win one -- at moments of complete and utter despair about mera Bharat parishaan, it is uplifting to watch Mr Sen being honoured with what is considered tobe the most prestigious award in the world. You don't want to burst out singing the national anthem but you do feel sorta warm and weepy.

The tears may have been the result of the frustration you felt while waiting for Sen's turn. You appeared to be watching scenes for the film, The Prize. First, the winners walk in two by two, smiling as per instructions. They sit down side by side. As per... The orchestra lilts and the royal procession enters. The orchestra swells and music fills the screen. The speeches commence. They `sound' wise and worthy. For all that you can understand they might be readings from theKamasutra.

Anyway... uncomprehending, you start to notice things: one musician resembles a youthful Robert De Niro, another looks like actor Richard Harris and blow me down with whisper, that violinist there...why yes, he definitely looks like a young Amartya Sen. You're distracted by the speakers' looks: why is he smiling? Is his hair his hair? Is his hair his hair but not in itsoriginal colour? Why, he wouldn't dye it would he, an old man like him... When you can't understand what's being said, your mind strays to the most inconsequential thoughts.

Then suddenly, in the sea of Swedish, a few English sentences bob up and down, addressing the winner. He stands, they all stand, the bugle blows, he approaches the King with eager, outstretched hands, they pump palms and then the ritual bows. The camera shifts to delighted, moist-eyed wives in the audience but more often than not, they've been obscured by the person in front of them. More music, more speeches. Worth it?

Adorable as Discovery Channel is, its programmes on Kathakali (The Dance of the Gods) and the Mail Runner were not worth it. They were rather pedestrian. In the case of the Mail Runner you might think this is an appropriate comment, since the Mail Runner doesn't run, he walks. He's already trod twice the distance around the globe, or so he claims. This half hour programme in the series IndiaWeek, follows one runner as he picks up his daily quota of letters from the post office and takes off to deliver them to people living in remote parts of Himachal Pradesh -- places, obviously only accessible on foot. The idea is quaint but the treatment commonplace. And fifteen minutes too long. How long can you watch someone walking with a knapsack on his back? True, he does stop hithr and thither but after a quarter of an hour, he needs to do something a little more compelling.

Now, the Kathakali dancers put clarified butter in their eyes. Then they rotate them, exercise them vigorously. Body-building gymnastics for the human marbles. Quite a sight. And by far the most interesting moment in the Dance of the Gods. The programme provided you with all that it takes to become a Kathakali dancer (in other words, everything you don't have), from the morning work-outs and the feet massages to the mudra practises; it also explained the colour codes (black = bad, red = anger... wouldn't you just know it?) andthe dance's historical antecedents. But there were few interviews and fewer perspectives. Most of all, the programme had about as much passion as a vibrator does.