The opening track for their ground-breaking travel show on good ole Doordarshan in the late 1980s was as soothing as their voices. If you, like this columnist, were a telly buff of similar vintage, Looking Beyond, Hugh and Colleen Gantzer’s travel show, was an eye-opener in so many ways. For middle-class kids like yours truly, who grew up in a (then, not now!) quiet northern suburb of Bombay, it offered a window to all that was fascinating in amazing, undiscovered India. The prime-time travel show on the lone television channel at the time was like a kaleidoscope for many like us who could only dream of visiting and exploring those hidden sights and gems in far-flung corners of our vast country.

The slow realisation of the magnitude and contribution of those in-depth research-backed shows in a technology-starved era, minus the glamorous faces, slick production and airbrushed frames that we are used to seeing across the dime-a-dozen shows by chef-turned-travel guides (and vice-versa) and other ‘intrepid travellers’ is critical to note, especially when we put things into perspective of the early days of travel show television. Hugh, a Christ Church School, Byculla, alumnus and his wife Colleen [she passed on last year, sadly] were pioneers in travel documentation as rock solid researchers and raconteurs who took the viewer seriously and gave them the 360-degree factually correct tour of every location on their map. The content and personal narrative made one [me for sure] feel as if you were given a tour by a friendly, knowledgeable and well-travelled uncle and aunt in your living room.