Wednesday, October 03, 2007

just a forward

To all the wonderful kids who were born in India and survived around the 70's:

First, we survived being born to mothers, some, whose husbands smoked or drank while they carried us. The mothers ate whatever food was there, and didn't get tested for diabetes. They were mothers who did not keep checking their blood pressure or go for special exercise classes before delivery.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or childproof doors on cars, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking or going out on our own. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or airbags. We sat on top of our or neighbors car without a second thought.
We drank water from the garden hose or for fun imagined it to be a captured snake. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this. We would share a dosa, dip a chapatti into someone else's plate of curry without batting an eyelid. We ate sandwiches with pickle on bread and raw mangoes with salt and drank orange squash with sugar and water in it.

We ate at roadside stalls, drank water from tender coconuts, ate everything - bhel puri to bhajias and samosas, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING - We jumped on each others backs shouting 'kity-kity' & went places in rented cycles & fixed its chain if it came out, on our own. We had no gadgets, we just hoping-goed & batting-goed & sometimes turned our sofas & chairs into 'land' and floor into 'water' or put 'jolly' dots on our palms and sometimes got 'statued'. We celebrated with 'same pinch' and 'new pinchs' with buddies & felt joy.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day during the holidays, we were never ever bored, and we were allowed freedom all day as long as we were back only when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day by mobile phone. We got drenched in rains, made paper boats, got pleasure from imitating croaking frogs, catching tadpoles and cutting earthworms. We touched street dogs & adopted their pups. And we were O.K.

We swam with an inflated tube which we got from somebody who was replacing their car tyres. We ran barefoot without thinking about it, if we got cut we used iodine on it which made us jump. We did not wash our hands ten times a day. And we were OK.

We did not have parents who said things like "what would you like for breakfast, lunch or dinner". We ate what was put in front of us and best of all, there was never any leftovers. We knew our cousins & our friends family well and had un announced lunches there. We never said to them "Thanks for having me over at your house to play" yet we were not dubbed "manner less". We had birthday parties at home & not in a party hall. The same B'day menu of cake, wafers & Thums-up still excited us & there were no return gifts, yet we looked forward to a friends birthday.

We fell out of trees numerous times, got cut, broke bones and teeth. We ate fruit lying on the ground that we shook down from the tree above. And we never washed fruit. We had a bath using a bucket and mug and used Lifebuoy or Hammam soap. We did not know what shampoo and conditioners meant. We sang along & recited all the 10 TV ads that came only before start of a program and enjoyed them as much as the program. All converged on Sunday time pass by watching Magic Lamp or Hindi movie on a black & white TV.

Yet this generation of ours has produced some of the best risk-takers & problem solvers ever! The past years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
Those were the days my friends, those were the days !

4 comments:

ani sharma said...

wow! beautiful! i adored every single sentence...it's so true like a day in my life nearly three decades ago. motherhood gives a different perspective to life...please tell me when the baby arrives...

Mind Curry said...

nice one. very true as well. maybe thats why the 70s show is also so much fun.

MG said...

Wow. Trust Michelle to write something so fantastic and nostalgic. How are you Michelle? And I think you are the same Michelle I know from good ol' BT. It's so good to read your blog. Hope you are well. Mgangwani@hotmail.com - do write in...It will be great to hear from you. Cheers!

Unknown said...

brillian!!

got me nostaligic. Am an eighties wallah.. but I can relate so well to this!