In the year 2000 I was directing a documentary on the impact of satellite television in South Asia. The skies had opened up with the 'dish' technology over this region and, in turn, it had opened the floodgates for a new cultural universe.

Travelling across the region from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Peshawar where Islamic groups had given a call to ban satellite television to the hills of Nepal where the government was fighting hard to have it's own Nepalese channel so that Nepali children did not say that Rajiv Gandhi was their prime minister - the stories and reactions we were filming were truly revealing.

As in all documentary filmmaking, there were several never-to-be-forgotten images and soundbytes. However, it was in a place called Manikganj near Bangladesh's capital Dhaka that I found what is known in the documentary world as "documentary gold".

I had gone to a village in Manikganj to gauge the voices of the people there regarding their views on the new satellite universe. It was mid-morning when we arrived there and were herded by the village people straight to a wedding. Curiosity made us accept the invitation and follow the people to the wedding venue.

What followed in the next hour took our breath away. From a distance we could see the bride's family walking through a long and winding village path to the bridegroom's house with the usual auspicious Bengali wedding gift of a whole big fish (a symbol of fertility which both sides exchange as a gift during weddings in Bengal on both sides of the border). But what was even more amazing was that they were also carrying a television set on their head for the bridegroom as the main item of dowry.