Baba smiled, sat back down, and picked up his newspaper. "See? I told you. Negotiation."

We cheered.

The show was Shaktimaan —an Indian superhero in a red and blue suit who fought a lizard-man. But the picture was never perfect. It flickered. It rolled. Sometimes, the hero’s face would dissolve into a cascade of grey static just as he was about to punch the villain.

Baba put down his newspaper. He walked to the TV, opened his toolbox, and pulled out a rusty screwdriver. For twenty minutes, he unscrewed the back panel. We watched, horrified and fascinated, as he revealed the guts of the beast: dusty vacuum tubes, copper wires, and capacitors like tiny cities.

One night, the monsoon hit. Thunder cracked, the lights flickered, and the Zate TV went black. Dead. A single grey dot glowed in the center of the screen and then faded.

It sits in my home office now. A paperweight. A monument. I don't plug it in anymore. I don't need to. Because when I close my eyes, I can still hear the thunk of the dial, the crackle of static, and my grandfather's voice:

"Meera, tilt it left!" I'd shout. "I am tilting!" she'd shout back. "Don't shout," Baba would murmur, not looking up from his newspaper. "The TV understands fear. You must negotiate with it."

Baba died in 2010. When we cleared the house, the Zate TV was the last thing left. The screen was cracked. The left antenna was missing. The wooden cabinet was warped from humidity.