24: The day Jack Bauer entered our lives

Day:           Tuesday April 24, 2009
Location:    GE Corporate West Building 1st Floor K Section Coffee Counter
Time:          9:00AM

I had just entered office and was setting up to start the day and three of my colleagues: Tim, Oso and AO stood right across my work area talking about the latest episode of 24, about how a certain Jack Bauer was a hero and how thrilling the series was turning out to be. In between faintly listening to their voices and setting up my computer, I had a gentle grin on my face - I was reminded of my time in Delhi when my mom used to live the ups and downs of the daily mega-soap opera Kyunki Saans Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi with her friends every afternoon and together brainstormed potential next day events; and, while still sporting that grin, I asked them..."WHAT IS wrong with you guys, why are you so obsessed with 24??"...to which very promptly they replied, "You should start watching and then you'll live the excitement with us!" I simply chose to ignore them at that time.

A few weeks later (after hearing about 24 all the time... morning set up time, lunch breaks, evenings!), I borrowed Season 1-5 of the series from AO. I came home and told my wife, Neha about it and both of us agreed to play the first episode as we sat down for dinner. So we sat down to watch Season 1 and it started with Jack Bauer's prologue:

"Right now, terrorists are planning to assassinate a presidential candidate. My wife and daughter have been kidnapped... and people that I work with may be involved in both. I'm Federal Agent Jack Bauer, and today is the longest day of my life."

We watched through the first couple of hours and at the end of the second hour, we both looked at each other with the kind of look on the face that said, "What's so great about this? A daughter is in bad company, parents looking for her at night and a guy works at a government agency to curb terrorism - I mean yeah, so what??", so we just went to sleep after that, clearly not finding anything good enough to sacrifice sleep! We got busy the next couple of days and thus did not continue watching from where we left. I mean, there was nothing yet that was gripping enough for us to go that extra mile just to watch it. Anyhow, after a few days, we decided to give it another shot, and started watching from the third hour...and the fourth and....by the time we reached the fifth hour, we began to get involved with the events and couldn't wait to see what happens next! But it was 11pm and we decided to call it a day...because for all those who know my wife, you'd know that staying awake beyond 10:30pm is a huge struggle for her! :)

Next day, both of us turned on the sixth hour while having dinner...we couldn't wait to see the next hour every time the prior hour ended. Boy, slowly and gradually, we were hooked!!!! We started watching 6-7 hours each night, staying up until 4am and then going to work at 9am.... day after day, week after week. Over the next 3-4 weeks, we finished all the five seasons! Now, AO did not have Season 6 with him and Season 7 was currently on air, so the DVD's hadn't released.....we tried Netflix and were thrilled to get Season 6 on it and quickly re-ordered our queue to get all the discs and wrapped it within a week! Things had changed, I became a participant to the Tuesday morning 24 discussions and was actively propagating others to start watching it! The wait for Season 7 to be released on DVD was killing us - Jack Bauer soon became the second man, Neha loved (obviously besides me!)!!!

On one of the weekends, while talking to my family back in India, and me and my brother were talking about something that I had asked him to enquire! The network did not seem that great and his voice began faltering a bit.... so to confirm that I was able to hear what he had just said, he repeated the whole thing again. The network wasn't that great but I was able to follow what he had said, and when he repeated it again, I quickly retorted, "Roger that!"

In due course, Season 7 released and we wrapped up watching it and life was back to normal with both Neha and I waiting to watch Season 8 live! On another weekend, while Neha was in the kitchen and I was inside in the bedroom, she yelled at me asking me to do something. I was busy doing something else and therefore didn't reply so Neha yelled out again, and just to indicate that I heard what she had said, I shouted back,"Neha, copy that!!!!!!!"

It didn't take me much time then, to realize that Jack Bauer had not only entered but also changed our lives and vocabulary for the foreseeable future!