Dear Colleagues,
For those who grew up during the 70s and well early
80s in middle class India.
1. Though you may not publicly own up, at the age
of 5-8 years, you were very proud of your first
"Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi"
2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes.
You can also nod your heads to names like
Chandamama, Champak, Lot-Pot, Nandan. The
brainy ones read "Competition Success Review".
3. You took pride in turning to the back page of your latest
Amar Chitra Katha and ticking off yet another title. How
many ever you ticked, you still had many to go.
4. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Flora
pencil were your prized possessions.
5. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your
grandparents' or your cousins' houses.
6. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla
softy in a cone or at most - a Choco Bar if you lived in
a swanky town.
7. Your first family car ( and the only one) was a Fiat.
Or an ambassador. This often had to be pushed by the
entire family to get going.
8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at the
two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you!
The window went down only if your puny arm could manage
the tacky rotary handle to pull it down. Locking the door was
easy. You just whacked the other tacky, non-rotary handle
downwards.
9. Your mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all
the windows of the car. They were tied in the middle
and if your dad was the comfort-oriented kinds, you had
a magnificent small fan upfront, below which screwed
to the board was the cassette player.
10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches.
You "earned" yours after 8th or the 10th standard
exams.
11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus" ; have held your
breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery
skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants
hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the
"Mautka Gola" and it was politically okay to laugh
your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others' bottoms!
12. You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.
13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood
to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday
movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house
that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.
14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and
got a bit or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which
they attached with two side clips onto their Weston TVs.
That confused the hell out of you!
15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because
cricket was played in whites.
16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own
( the family's; not your own own!) colour TV when the
Asian Games started. Everyone else got the same idea
as well and ever since, no one came over to your house
and you didn't go to anyone else's.
17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because
of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After
all how much "Shashtriya Sangeet" can a kid take?
Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.
18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really
powerful and terribly important. And
that's all you needed to know.
19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge
and the Mixie..
20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet
covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit
plastic covers.
21. Movies meant Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the
movie you always had to watch the obligatory "newsreel".
22. You thought you were so rocking because you
knew almost all the songs of Abba and BoneyM
23. You had a turntable "stereo" and a collection of LP Records.
Your hormones went crazy when you bought "Disco Deewane"
by Nazia Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.
24. You couldn't contain your happiness when you suddenly had
knowledge of Grammy awards and Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper
& OMG even Michael Jackson became familiar names.
25. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could
whack you and it was all okay.
26. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your
family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was
valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation
& "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore,
you have atleast one family picture where everyone is
holding their breath and standing at attention!
with regards ,
--
Pradyut
http://pradyut.tk
http://oop-edge.blogspot.com/
http://pradyutb.blogspot.com/
http://praddy-photos.blogspot.com/
http://oop-edge.spaces.live.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/praddy
http://groups.google.com/group/oop_programming
India
