Growing up in the seventies!

Someone emailed me the following article. I liked it and thought of sharing it with my friends on rediff. All the youngsters on Rediff may find it a bit difficult to conceive that such a world existed. Yes, it did, and most of its inhabitants were reasonably happy….

For those who grew up during the 70s in middle class India, here are some things that you can identify with – at least I do!

1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 12-17 years, you were very proud of your first ‘Bell bottom’, your first ‘Maxi’ or your first Apache jeans.

2. Phantom Mandrake were your only true heroes. The brainy ones read ‘Competition Success Review’.

3. Your ‘Camlin’ geometry box Natraj/Flora pencil was your prized possession.

4. The only ‘holidays’ you took were to go to your grandparents’ or your cousins’ houses.

5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick, or a Choco Bar if you were better off than most.

6. You gave your neighbour’s phone number to others with a ‘c/o’ written against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still waiting for your number to come.

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.

10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You ‘earned’ yours after SSC 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 ‘Maut ka Gola’ and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms!

12. You have at least 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 bi 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 possibly a mixer.

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 Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to suffer the obligatory ‘Newsreel’.

22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.

23. Your hormones went crazy when you heard ‘Disco Deewane’ by Naziya Hassan - Zoheb Hassan.

24. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.

25. 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 at least one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention!

And we were really happy then….

First Love

With everyone writing about love, I too thought of joining the brigade. Although officially middle aged and certified jaded, I was young once and as a reed thin and gawky (read ugly) young man, I too yearned to find the love of my life. Now it was a different matter that all the beautiful girls in my college never even looked at me. (On honest retrospection, I really don’t blame them) But hormones being hormones, they were doing their job and I was pining away for the princess of my dreams.

And one day, I got it. A small crumpled note, thrown into my hostel room. (Those days there were no mobiles, no internet, no social websites. Cards were too expensive and the only acceptable way of conveying your sentiments were anonymous notes written on pages torn off our notebooks). I like you, it said in large feminine hand writing. I nearly swooned with excitement. I rushed to the bathroom, the only place where we got a modicum of privacy and gazed at it lovingly. I even smelled it, expecting it to be perfumed, but it smelled of formalin from the dissection hall of the anatomy department. I tried to imagine the girl behind the note, but my imagination boggled. I went around grinning like an idiot for a few days till my room mate got alarmed and offered to accompany me to the psychiatry department for a checkup. I politely declined and smiled inward. What does this retard know? I thought, a girl actually likes me.

After a fortnight, there was another one. A note, I mean and not a room mate. Did you get my previous note, it asked and went on to declare, I want to talk to you. Talk to me, wow, great, unbelievable. All I need to do is find the girl behind the note. And that was easier said than done. I spent the better part of the week sneaking looks at all my female classmates and trying to find the girl behind the note. But it was of no avail. There was not even a hint of interest in any of the kohl lined eyes. The stupid tutor caught me staring at the girls and kicked me out of the class for the day.

Another note came after a week. Why are you ignoring me, it asked plaintively, Why don’t you reply. Ignoring who???? And I want to reply! In fact I want to throw myself at your beautiful feet and kiss them till kingdom comes but how do I find you????? By now the testosterone and other sundry relations in my puny frame were at boiling point. Do you know what these are? The same hormones which make the she donkey appear beautiful to the he donkey and the female owl the most desirable to the male owl and all that. Got the drift? Good!

It was time to get some help. I confided in my close friends over a bottle of shared beer (as one bottle was all we could afford in those days of penury.) You are bullshitting; no girl will send you a note; someone is pulling your leg etc. were the universal verdict. At last my room mate (the same who had diagnosed me a loony) took the responsibility of hunting up the lady in question. He went about the job with a calm assurance (which even bordered on indifference to my palpitating heart) A day passed, two days, three and then a week and there was no progress. Relax, these things take time was his standard rejoinder to my constant pestering. The week turned to a month and there was no answer. Yes, he started staying away from the room for inordinately long periods of time.

Then I found out that he had been spending most of the time with a girl from my class in the canteen. I was aghast at this perceived act of betrayal. When I accused him of stealing my girl, he was unrepentant. Actually dude, the notes were meant for me. You simply picked them up by mistake, was his explanation.

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Flash fiction- 55 word stories

I have just one thing to say in defence of these stories. All of them are exactly 55 words.

The beer bar was shrouded in shadows. The dancers gyrated to raunchy bollywood numbers on the makeshift stage while the patrons gaped at them.
A group of young friends in a corner chatted animatedly. “Shit!” said one of them, pointing to a couple of middle aged men who had just entered. “My dad is here!”

 

***

The private detective listened as the lady said, “I am sure my husband is cheating on me. I want you to get me the proof so that I can divorce the insect.”
After she had left, the man sighed as he remembered that her husband had been in the previous day with a similar demand.
***

As the sunlight faded in the cold and foggy December evening, most of the working girls hurried home. Some had families to go back to while others went back to their respective working women hostels or PG accommodations.

However, for the girl with sad eyes, excessive make-up and cheap perfume, the day was just beginning.

 

***

Her husband was away to Bangkok.  

It’s a very important academic event and I simply can’t miss it, he had told her before going.She had smiled in acquiescence while feigning ignorance about his real motive.

She picked up the phone and dialed. “Hi sweetheart, today you can stay the whole night if you wish…. “

 

***

The midwife had been struggling with the delivery the whole night.

 It was a difficult case and they should have taken her to the city hospital, she grumbled.

But the family was poor and could ill afford the transport and the costs involved.

At last, the baby arrived and cried lustily. She smiled in relief.

 

***

 

It had been raining the whole night.

The overflowing river waters were threatening to enter the little hut where she lived with her three children.

 They had all spent the night huddled in the middle.

It stopped raining in the morning and the sun peeped through the clouds bringing with it a message of hope.

 

***

He stopped his car on seeing the roadside lunatic. 

Some Good Samaritan had left cooked rice and water on the sidewalk for the birds.

The mynahs and crows were having a feast and he was happily sharing their meal.  

He snapped a photograph on his mobile camera for his face book update and drove on.

***

He scoffed at the concept of ghosts. 

Was willing to spend a night in a haunted house to win a bet ; he took a flask of coffee and his ipod, made himself comfortable and waited for the night to end so that he could collect the money. 

The night never ended, at least for him.

 

 

 

 *** 

 

 

Room number 206, Sunrise Hotel.

Bored housewife ….afternoon trysts.
Fun as well as some cash.

Waiting for her next client. 

The bell chimes! She puts on her most seductive smile to usher him in.
Both stare at each other in utter shock. 

Wasn’t her husband supposed to be working in his office at that time?