My Childhood Days

Nostalgia – मेरा बचपन

Pictures speak louder than words. Some pictures which encapsulate the ‘growing up’ years of my generation form part of this blog. I am sure those of my generation who are reading this would be transported back to those years when we used to have the ‘run of the place’; a journey down ‘nostalgia alley’ to end up in the playground of ‘fond memories from our childhood’

Those were the days. All the kids born in the late 70s through the 80s would have fond memories of "एक अनेक और एकता" (in Media Player, in Real Player), a whole generation brought up on “एक तित्ली अनेक तित्लियाँ; दीदी ये अनेक क्या है”, of Sunday afternoons eagerly awaiting “Vikram और Betaal”, the weird, hilarious, utterly intriguing Sunday mornings with “Chandrakanta” (I remember the lead villain in that serial going “Yakkkuu” so vividly now), the endless wait with bated breath for “Chitrahaar” on Wednesday and Friday evenings – the desperation sometimes extreme enough to force us to sit through “Krishi Darshan” (आलू के मूल को दो फूट के फासले पर लगायें) with the frustration of the realization that time had come to a standstill.

Oh! The He-man and चड्डी पहन के फूल खिला है Mowgli Sunday mornings, the “Malgudi Days” evenings with स्वामी, the occasional “मिले सुर मेरा तुम्हारा” ringing in our ears, the reveling in the exploits of “Chacha Choudhry” and “Sabu” (who was 12 times the size of normal humans because he was from ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Jupiter’ is 12 times the size of ‘Earth’ by volume), and accompanying "Bahadur" (the Indian ‘Phantom’) on his adventures. Those were the days when the old women of the family (the ‘naanis’ and ‘daadis’) would reverently gaze @ Lord Ram or Krishna and very surreptitiously join their palms (in a ‘pranaam’) in reverence and devotion hoping that no one was looking esp. the kids who would tease them later.

Those were the days when the sky was such a dazzling blue (therez so much pollution these days -- Circuit), the stars shone brighter, spring smelt like, well ‘spring’ unlike the uniformity of stench ‘smoke, sweat, piss n smut’ across seasons these days.

Those were the days of gay abandon, when ‘loan installments’, ‘commitments’, ‘appraisals’ etc had not pervaded our vocabulary and consciousness and overpowered our lives.