As the sun sets on this decade and we welcome a brand new year, it’s time to pause, reflect and cherish the best moments of ones life! This nostalgia led to further introspection, and I tried to think which decade was most dear to me! At the cost of sounding old, the 80s had to make it to the top of the list, just for its sheer innocence! If you ask me looking back what would I be most thankful for? I would say, I am most grateful for the fact that my entire childhood was spent in the absence of smartphones and social media. My parents spent quality time with me, with absolutely NO distractions.
So for those of you who were born much later, let me explain what that beautiful bygone era meant to me. It meant that it was ok to do nothing, it meant that it was wonderful to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, it meant that play most often involved coming up with creative ideas, it meant that though you had no recorded visuals of fun times, no insta stories or hashtag moments, YET all memories were etched in your brain, it meant giving your complete attention to one thing or person at a time, it meant to be ‘PRESENT’ in the present!
Technology was just paving its way in the 80s. I still remember the first time we got a landline telephone connection. Me and my sister thoroughly enjoyed prank calling. We dialled random numbers and wished them happy new year though it was not new year. How were we caught? When dad paid the bills of course!
The next jolt of technology came in the form of television. The look on our faces when the square shaped screen was brought into our home was priceless! We were happy with the only channel we had - ‘Doordarshan’. We never needed a remote, hence there were no fights. Most of the times, a half an hour show was packed with 15mins of advertisements. So me and my sister used to play a game of guessing the product, just by watching the first 3 seconds of the advertisement! Those were the first traps of marketing!
TV Antenna Photo by Kadir Celep on Unsplash
But my best memory of a television was when we went to our hometown in Kerala. Every Sunday, when Mahabharat would air, our home turned into a mini theatre with the living room flooded with people from the entire village, few even standing outside and peeping through the window just to get a glimpse of the show. And when there was a glitch or pause we rushed to the rooftop moving the antenna (seen in pic) in all possible directions!
Speaking about hometown, during summer vacations we always travelled to Kerala. Unlike today, flying was never an option as it was very expensive. This meant 2-3 days of travel by train to reach our destination. As a kid, every step of the travel was exciting. From packing our luggages, to buying our favourite books from the station Tinkle, Champak, Readers Digest, Suppandi tales etc., to name a few, to fighting over the window seat and eagerly waiting for the food vendors to walk in with samosas, chai/ coffee, yummy cutlets with ketchup, vada and the menu for the night were the highlights of the travel.
Indian railways photo by Anant Sharma from Pixabay
Sitting by the window seat and gazing into the untouched and serene part of India was mesmerising. It was also the time to get creative with games as the resources were limited. Paper became boats and rockets, coffee cups turned into houses and a simple thread turned into a butterfly. The whole family and sometimes the co-passengers also joined in a game of antaakshiri, name/place/animal/thing, dumb charades etc., Experience of travelling in Indian trains should be a blog in itself!
Travel was also a time to come up with innovations. When we travelled by road, our mode of transport was the good old Ambassador car and our journeys often lasted 12-15 hours. Summers were extremely hot in Andhra and since there was no AC in the car, we used to put the grass from our water cooler on the roof of the car and wet it every hour, we used to hang wet towels by the window so that the wind was cooler as we travelled! We spent hours waving goodbye to little kids, stopping at dhabas tasting mouth watering food, visiting temples or monuments that we had no idea existed (just found them on the way) and glaring endlessly at the colourful ‘HORN OK PLEASE!’ signboards behind the lorries!
Summers were also synonymous with power-cuts. That one hour when the lights went off, was my favourite moment of the day. Mom lit her small oil lamp, we as a family sat on the ‘nawar cot/ charpai - traditionally woven bed’ laid outside under a beautiful starlit sky free of pollution, with our legs folded up to avoid the occasional snakes & frogs that came to say hello:) For that one hour we played, laughed, talked about our issues, discussed politics and I always wished for the clock to pause & freeze in time. That moment perhaps symbolised what that entire decade stood for - simplicity, togetherness and unity! Cheers to simpler times!
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