Growing up with Ityadi

Reminiscing one's childhood in its entirety is unfeasible. What's left in our memory are Alif Laila, The Adventures of Sinbad and probably the most persistent one, Ityadi.

With the entire family cooped up in your drawing room on Eid day, you sit through the 8 PM news on BTV and wait for the show to start with that iconic opening theme. Apart from Hanif Sanket's amazing arsenal of alliterations followed by short comedy skits, few of the routine segments still resonate all these years later.

Nana-Nati

The routine comedy skit between an annoyed grandfather and his quirky grandson was probably the most anticipated part of the show. A typical "Nana-Nati" sketch would start as a generic conversation between the two, except the grandson would find faults in everything his grandpa had to say.

Nati's bizarre nit-pickings would remind us of the silly mistakes we make in our everyday conversation and annoy Nana enough for him to give up on his grandson, start crying or worse, start beating up his grandson to put an end to his hilarious misery.

Mama-Bhagne

Typically, the nephew in the skit would come up with a witty business scheme and invest in it with his uncle's money. The schemes would usually be intended to capitalise on faults or weaknesses in our daily habits, social stigmas or some sort of national crisis.

The idiosyncrasy of the business plan mixed with Bhagne's hilarious and eccentric pitch to his uncle made the skit iconic. The uncle, however, would almost always reject his business plan and end the sketch on an educational message.

Bangla Dubs

Though Nana-Nati and Mama-Bhagne segments were hilarious, the epitome of comedy for me has to be Ityadi's Bangla dubs of foreign video clips presented in regional dialects from Noakhali and Barisal. Although the clips were mostly taken from British sketches and skits, Hanif Sanket and his team's hilarious script blended with peculiar accents made it the most exciting segment of the show.

Hanif Sanket took it up a notch when he introduced a new segment where foreigners dressed up in local clothes and acted out typical Bangladeshi household scenarios. It didn't even matter whether the jokes landed or not; foreigners speaking in broken Bangladeshi accents ended up being the funniest thing I came across as a kid.

Song Parodies

How ingenious of an idea is it to make a Bangla parody of the popular song "Hotel California" by Eagles on national television simply by using the word 'Saladia' in place of 'California' to give it a local flavour while giving a tribute to roadside restaurants! Not only did Ityadi provide a platform to emerging artists, but also arranged the biggest collabs in the music industry while presenting the most eccentric, unique, and unconventional music – be it parodies or social commentary.

Even after all these years, Ityadi isn't about the sketches, songs, gift hampers or the very culture of social commentary through satire that Hanif Sanket popularised. Ityadi, for me, will always be the only connection I have left to my simpler days of Eid that went missing somewhere along the way.

Remind Ifti to be quieter at hasiburrashidifti@gmail.com