- 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!
You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.
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.
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!
Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.
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.
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.
You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.
The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a mixer.
All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.
Movies meant Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory "Newsreel".
You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.
Your hormones went crazy when you heard "Disco Deewane" by Naziya Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.
School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.
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!
And we were really happy then....see what the new technology has brought you to...no peace of mind, only pressure and stress
