Indian Nostalgia. An Ode to ‘Our Times”.  A trip down Memory Lane

Firstly, anyone not born in the sixties can skip reading further. Secondly, no humour is intended, this being nothing but a nostalgia trip about life in India during the 70s and 80s.

Life in India during the 70s and 80s had Sholay, Gavaskar, Rajesh Khanna and Rajdoot GTS (Bobby). Airlines allowed you to smoke onboard – and also offered toffees. We had the Hindu rate of growth (at least till the mid 80s). Then we had falling reserves, an unsustainable fiscal situation, the Punjab violence and the Shah Bano case. But we kids knew nothing about that.  

What we did know was that – ‘Jo biwi se suchmuch kare pyaar, wo Prestige se kaise kare inkaar’! This line from an ad from that innocent period could be loosely translated to – ‘A cooker is the best gift of love.’ Now this may seem a bit misogynistic in today’s woke times, but it hit home and was one of the most successful tag lines ever. It resonated so much in my mind that on getting married in 1990, I presented one to The Wife with much fanfare on her birthday. Boy,  that did not go well!

Then we had Alyque Padamsee helping us transition from Lalitaji with her commonsense and Surf, to Karen Lunel with her unabashed joy under a waterfall. Over time, “Surf ki kharidari mein hi samajhdari hai” changed to “Jo bhi daag ho, Surf hai na” then to “Daag dhoondte reh jaaoge” and finally to a counterfactual “Daag ache hain”. Sadly Karen and Lalitaji are just memories now.

Similarly so the guy who would roam our childhood streets promising to fluff our mattresses with a strange contraption that looked like a huge tanpura/single string harp. The one that would make that unmistakable ‘twaing, twaing’ sound as it passed by our houses. Now that was true home delivery of services! Or take knife sharpening? The shrill ‘trrriiiiii’ sound of the knife being ground on a wheel  is no longer heard, nor the sparks that flew as a result, seen.

We could get anything repaired those days; cookers and plastic buckets included. We could get shoes resoled and sweaters ‘rafooed’. We could hear the cries of various vendors pleading with us to buy aloo and pyaaz or, exchange old clothes for steel utensils. Moms could haggle with the raddi wala over the exchange price of newspapers, bottles and corrugated metal appliances.  All gone now.

Life in India in the 70s and 80s also saw us happily gulp down ‘ice golas’ or ‘goli soda’ (that marvel of a marble in a soda bottle) all made from water that came from sources that had never made acquaintance with Sediment Filters/RO/UV/UF. We paid for those delights with 20, 10 and 5 paise coins (yes they existed and sometimes two and one paise coins were useful too). The monsoons would see our parents, if moneyed, bring out the powdered and stored ‘Duckback’ attire.  The less fortunate would get a slightly different ‘Dackbuck’ (or some such), in plastic that would develop cracks/tears after being worn twice.  Winters would see us don colourful but itchy sweaters knitted by our moms along with the hated ‘monkeycaps’. The rich used Camay, not so rich Lux and the middle class consoled themselves by philosophising ‘Lifebuoy hai jahan, tandurusti hai wahan’. For a further dose of middle class peculiarities, please ready my post Aah Parents!

The rich those days favoured that green bottle of ‘imported’ Vat 69 or that bottle with the dancing lady – Dimple whiskey. The rich also had VCRs costing about Rs 40,000/- before the VCDs/DVDs put them in cold storage. They holidayed abroad and brought phoren goodies for their relatives. They owned Ambassadors, Fiats or Standard cars. Ambassadors/Fiats can still be seen in some caught-in-a-time-warp quaint corners of India such as Calcutta (Kolkata) or as the fast vanishing taxis in Mumbai. The Ambassadors, dating back I think to the Bronze age, were ideal for India; enterprising Indians could fit 7-8 adults inside one. It was the only car that would rattle along even as a few pieces of machinery, (or even a wheel), fell off.

Indians those days wore that godawful thingy called Safari Suits, be you a business mogul, chamcha of a film villain, a top level Government functionary……. or a dad. Not if you were a politician of course (or a woman thankfully). Politicians scoff at change and they wore the same things they wear today. Women wore only sarees. They did their household chores, chaired meeting (the few who did chair meetings), slept, shopped and lazed in sarees. Until, the arrival of (god bless him) Mr Benny. He changed life in India of the 80s forever.

What with Mr Benny being a bra salesman, his profession apparently gave him a keen insight into the mystery that has been plaguing men since the days of Mahabharata – ‘what women want’. A nightie surmised Mr Benny with some prescience. Made of cotton and/or polyester in an all-encompassing  tent shaped cut (with occasional puffed sleeves and an odd ribbon to add a bit of style), the nightie became a rage first across Kerala in the late 1980s, and then across the country. Made as ‘night wear’ (and hence the nomenclature ‘nightie’ my astute mind tells me) the nightie soon became day wear and then casual outside wear. Ladies could be seen wearing it for a quick trip to the neighbourhood kirana shop, dropping children to the school bus or even taking evening strolls around the neighbourhood. House work was accomplished with the nightie hitched up on one side and tucked into the waist band of whatever they wore underneath.

Then :-

• Moms preferred that sticky congealed greasy white thing that was a good advertisement for inviting cardiac arrythmia for cooking.
• Bata and Corona were the only brands for school/party shoes. One shoe (Corona?), should you get lost on the way home from school, even had a compass inside!
• Coca Cola having been shown the door by a then up and coming Trade Unionist, George Fernandes, Campa Cola was the king for the affluent, Roof Afza for the somewhat affluent and ‘I Love You’ Rasna for everyone  else. My family fell in the everyone else category. But occasionally we made forays into the somewhat affluent one. So, we did buy Roof Afza once in a while, but only for special guests. These special guests would be served the same in glass tumblers that would make a rare appearance and then be packed for next ‘special’ guests. Occasionally we could sneak in some Roof Afza into our milk (heavenly). Else, we would make do with ‘Pepsi Cola’ in a plastic tube, which was intriguingly, neither Pepsi nor Cola. All for 40 paise!
• We played lattu, gilly danda, marbles, pithu, hide and seek, etc (You can if you so desire read more about stolen childhood games here). If we weren’t playing, we could watch as many as three programmes (Sunday movie, Chitrahaar and Rukawat Ke Liye Khed Hai) on our black and white TVs – with the added adventure of having to align the antenna on the roof every so often! (I’ve written about this in detail earlier and you can educate yourselves here.)
• We loved bell bottoms – the larger the bottom the better (not THAT bottom). The dandier amongst us added a zip at the bottom (again not THAT bottom).
• We waited 2-3 years for that black thingy called a telephone. But if you wanted a Bajaj Scooter (Buland Bharat Ki Buland Tasveer), you could end up waiting even longer. At one point, 10 years.

Sadly, the only constant in life being change, the life of the 70s and 80s has all but vanished. I, being a practical guy, have no grouse against change and am actually all for it. Provided nothing is altered.