That Indian childhood!

When a senior of mine posted this link as her Gmail status message, I opened it simply because I had an hour to kill before lunch and it was only the first day back in college. ’60 Things that Defined Your Childhood in India’, it read and I was a little sceptical. Thanks to the absence of a truly Indian early childhood, I often find (sometimes a little wistfully) that I do not always relate to these lists of memories. Imagine my surprise when most of these looked like pages from my own personal diary.

Over the last few months, a lot of us have been hit with the gap between our self-perception and how the rest of them see us. Just out of high school versus halfway through a post-graduation, just children versus almost adults, ‘we were freshies just yesterday’ versus ‘you are almost final years’ – the contrast hits us all often enough. With this shake-up also comes with it its own sack full of nostalgia and as I sat in my hostel room, thinking of how the curtains needed to be washed and the dust was creeping its way back into the room while distractedly looking at this list, I found myself hit with a tsunami of memories.

This one is to those of you who were around for one or the other of this list, and each of you desi kids who have a list of your own! Here is a quick list of what ran through my mind when I was reading, more for my sake than yours but ah well. :D

1. Geometry boxes. One of the few parts of Math that I have consistently liked. My brother was recently asking my father for a replacement when I realised it has been about five years since I touched one. Stood around drawing circles for a few minutes, just for the heck of it. As for Natraj pencils, what ever happened to the constant Natraj vs Apsara battle? Which was sharper, darker and longer lasting? :D
2. The number of people I should have gotten married to already! Why bother with jaadhagam when FLAMES provides us all the answers? The one exception to my self-imposed rule of not scribbling on the last page of a notebook was this relationship counsellor!
3. Rasna! The marker of my Indian summers and Frooti continues to be a favourite on long Indian Railways journeys.
4. Fancy dress parties were the best way to reuse old Halloween costumes. Oops :P
5. Honestly, more for the brother than me. Too vivid memories of jamming a hand into a heavy one.
6. AN ugly Godrej almirah? Whatever happened to the rest? I think I can count off atleast three. The safest space to store anything in the house! And the ones with a mirror were always the fanciest.
7. It just hit me when I saw this on the list that the guy in the ad was actually just acting, that it was a job that he got paid for. For the last fifteen years, he has just been the Onida devil. Yikes. As for the Amul girl, if only we could be as spontaneous and knowledgable, we wouldn’t need to blink when professors catch us off guard with something this morning’s papers!
8. Those lunch boxes! And trying to graduate to more ‘cool’ stuff. And fighting the battle with your mother about what looked good versus what retained heat. Sigh.
9. Tiger Balm. Amruthanjan. Vicks. Iodex. All of them, in every house, serving practically the same purposes. My grandmother swears they are not all the same though. I also fought with her recently for switching from Mysore Sandal. What is Paati’s house without that smell?
10. “Your shoes aren’t white. Two extra rounds” the PT teacher could threaten and hence, they shall be rigorously polished. I can almost picture it – wedged between the sofa and the balcony door, trying to get up without getting wet polish on the floors and walls.
11. Granddad during the summers.
12. There were months when there was an actual wound on my fingers. Not that I ever got particularly good at it. Oh, and playing with a gullible younger sibling and bending the rules to suit your convenience.
13. School excursions from Pollachi to Cochin had us Madrasis belting out Hindi tunes. I don’t think I have ever gotten past the chorus :P
14. I think there is still a badminton racquet languishing above my bookshelf at home. Yellow cover and definitely not Yonex!
15. SO. TRUE.
16. When Sachin Tendulkar himself took a flying kick of the football to land exactly in the goal, how could we not benefit from it? Especially since I still cannot stand Complan. My loyalties took a sabbatical only when Milo started giving us free books. :P
17. Wear the nicest outfit, hand out candy to everyone, sure. But who can forget the power politics of choosing who will come with you to distribute, of figuring out who will get two Eclairs and who three?
18. Still is. I rest my case.
19. Hahahaha.
20. Or, if you are at your grandparents’ house, sit around them as they tell you stories of the Gods or the sages or just yet another smart animal who speaks. Or you sing.
21. The fact that Cadbury Celebrations still gives a pack of Gems never fails to excite me.
22. Hahaha. I was home yesterday when my grandmother told me “Nanna yennai vechhu thalai vaarikko nee. Nanna ve ille ippo!” (“Put some oil and comb your hair nicely. It looks horrid now.”) Some things honestly don’t change.
23. Blue pinafore. Blue and white checked shirt. Dark blue tie with golden letters on them. Blue ribbons. White socks and well-polished shoes. ID cards, hair clips and bicycle shorts. Gearing up for a day at school.
24. And learnt quick reflexes by letting the saatai go at the right time and hopping out of the way of a chakram.
25. This was one of the few I had to skip.
26. Yesssssss. The biggest price that the Metro project has taken is that access to the BC library is now obscure!
27. Yummmmm. All of us have faked our fair share of stomach aches for just one Hajmola. And later, when we could, we have bought it just for the heck of it.
28. And ‘Ham, Cheese, Ham-burger, Sauce, Potato, Chip-chip-chip!’
29. And Limca still remains a tonic to queasiness in the stomach.
30. Whether you knew what they were doing or not, you knew when to cheer and when to gasp. I remember knowing that loooong before I asked how many balls made an over during an Indo-Pak World Cup match.
31. Or just the biscuit, if you weren’t allowed the chai. It was also the safest food in town – no matter where you were, you could eat Marie biscuit without falling sick!
32. ...and the rest of your Indian mythology stories play in your head as panels of detailed sketches with speech bubbles.
33. I still get excited at Toblerone. Every piece of chocolate needed to rationed out with great care. Only the very best behaviour deserved an extra nibble. And younger siblings will get yelled at for taking an extra helping.
34. Parle babbyyy! As for whether it really is the world’s largest selling biscuits or not, no one cared to question.
35. Roads, drains, ponds, thotti, wherever there was more water than usual!
36. Still plead guilty to that one.
37. Bindis and that kumkum paste that used to come in little dishes. My first and last experiment with rouge, that was!
38. Pass.
39. And school also taught me how to make diyas with broken bangles. Never quite used that one again. If only I could remember the rules now! A page number ending with 9 was out, was it? The perfect solution to Zero Period, when you were bored out of your mind but couldn’t make noise.
40. Oh lord, yes. Except I used to like the taste of it :P
41. Hahahaha. Vivid memories of passing lorry guys looking worriedly at us in the school bus, showing off through the window!
42. Even much after I knew the meaning of the word, ‘ambassador’ was always the car!
43. I have always called it Hopscotch but whatever it was, we used to make the most convoluted tasks to complete. Stand on one foot with one hand on your hip while bending to pick up a stone three steps away. And obviously, do not break your head attempting it.
44. Cheeslings? Hostel saviour. The end.
45. Pass on this one, too.
46. Ummm, nope.
47. Nirmaaa! Yes, we all knew the words, still do. The constant companion to particular crazy days in hostel and particularly desperate times when playing Antakshari.
48. Blue colour packet, Anna! Always the favourite.
49. Cricket cards, WWE cards, whatever. Pokemon was always the coolest.
50. Hahaha. Still do. Dad has been meaning to have them converted to CDs for ages.
51. It was 4^th for us. Vivid memory of a friend being the genius who tried to blow air into the pen to get it to work. First class, first day of school and a mouth full of ink.
52. Still have a bunch of mine lying around, filled with the gossip of the season – who was teased with who, who should be teased with who. All of it.
53. Shoes as the crease, sticks as the stumps and no wickets. Flip-flops or best case, barefoot. Yes, I have played gully cricket!
54. One of those rare things that still cost near nothing.
55. Yessss! And that one year when your parents taught you to do it yourself. Rite of passage indeed.
56. Mahaabhaaraaaaaat. The deep, bass voice of Time taking us through the epic saga. Somehow this new one is just too filmy in comparison.
57. “Adhu vandhu, andha second cousin ode wife ode father ode brother’s second son, ma” my grandmother will tell me with a straight face. Worse, we remember it!
58. And then the day you sit straight and your head grazes the ceiling, you know you’ve grown to be a big girl!
59. We still carry ‘glucose dabba’ to strenuous exercise!
60. Independence Day, Republic Day, whatever else. When someone hands you a flag, you pin it to your clothes. The end.

If you are a 90s kid, how many of these do you relate to?

Here is the list I used:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/childhood-in-india?bffb

And here is a magically written blog post on a similar subject. I can just never tire of reading this one. http://thepoetryof.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/a-certain-south-indian-childhood/

My day has been made :)