1980s

I think it’s the age. Nostalgia is at its worst in the thirties. There are so many memories that it would take me another thirty years to share them. Childhood now is so much different from what it was in the eighties. I’ve read many mails, SMSs, Facebook posts, et cetera reminding me of my childhood. These mails/SMSs /Facebook posts occur as frequently as India – Sri Lanka ODIs. I’ve read them a thousand times. But for the heck of it, if another one comes now, I’ll probably read it again.

The thing is – I love eating food. And I hate exercises. So I eat a lot of food and I don’t exercise. This imbalance in my personal universe has resulted in a significant increase in my body weight, and volume. A doctor chipped in and painted a more gruesome picture than any Hussain. So it was inferenced and advised that I should eat less and exercise more. Which I hate, as aforementioned.

Often I used to think about my childhood – the things we did, the food we ate, the games we played, pastimes, TV shows, VCRs – but never before I felt nostalgic as I did when the doctor,  ah the doctor, advised about the exercise. How I loved playing cricket and football. This thought gave me an idea. Instead of walking/cycling five miles and staying on the same spot, I can play a sport! But I wanted to play a different sport. This is how I started lawn tennis.

That was two years ago.

There are kids in a sports complex. Either they are by themselves (teenagers) or they are with their parents. While playing or warming up or jogging, I notice them, and couldn’t help thinking about my childhood or teenage. And how lucky was I growing up in the eighties.

Here are the advantages:

The best one is – if you could lie, and lie convincingly, people would get awed. Brag about anything and you would become the undisputed leader of your bunch. In fifth grade, I lied about watching Kapil Dev’s 175* on TV. Nobody dared to dispute me. Now, a couple of my childhood friends with good memories have already fried me for those lies. In present times, kids find it difficult to lie. Their claims can be easily verified on Google or Wikipedia.

Another advantage was our ability to climb trees. Tiffin in school was usually eaten on a branch of tree. It would take me not more than five minutes to climb down my terrace, run across the yard, climb the tree, take out the tangled kite from a branch, climb down and run back up to the terrace. Surprisingly, I never broke any bones because of this. Climbing tree and cycles were responsible for more than half of the broken bones cases in our times. I was watching a kid trying to climb a tree in the sports club one day. To my horror, his mom started shouting like Momota didi and forced him away. Our parents never did that.

Football was the cheapest sport. Just an oversized orb (of soft material) was needed. Chappals marked the goal posts. There was never any grass on the field. You could wear shorts, trousers, or pajamas. Nowadays, the kids must have proper shoes (Rs. 5000), three to four footballs (Rs. 2000), any European club jersey (Rs. 6000) and then I watch their expression when they had to venture out of the grass into the mud and dirty their shoes (priceless). Or their parents just gift them a Playstation.

Gulel was like an AK-47 in our hands. We were expert marksmen. Kites which were tangled very high on the trees were our favorite targets. I once watched a kid at the playground trying out a branded plastic Gulel. He hit himself.

Cricket. Ah..cricket. Every single evening, every fucking single evening, was spent playing cricket. We played cricket to become like Kapil or Sachin. Now they play cricket to get rich.

Antakshari is no longer possible. Unless you confiscate cell phones of everyone who is playing, or watching.

There are countless more things – Hum Log, Ramayan, Mithun da was the pinnacle of dancing, Amitabh Bachchanwa didn’t had a beard, Ravi Shastri would not know what a tracer bullet was, there were only shorts and trousers – no Bermudas or three-fourths or seven-eigths, only two kinds of hairstyles – champu and Mithun da’s,  ten paise coins and one rupee notes.

Times change. May be our kids will tell their kids that our parents played football with legs, we played with a TV and a thumbs, now you people just put on your Google glasses (may be Apple will come up with iSpecs) and play with your eyes.

Another day comes to an end.