Nostalgia
Today, as I was sitting around, surfing youtube, suddenly I felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me. It kind of started when I saw this montage after ages :
Television was so simple back then - pretty much everyone you knew watched the same programs, parents analysed the same newscasters, no matter how robotic the drone on the television was. The morning programs consisted of people doing exercise - which meant a sardarji in a grey jogging suit & some aunty in a blue jogging suit doing cross-toe touching(not exactly "Primebodies", but definitely interesting).
If you missed an episode of any TV serial - that was it, you'd missed it for pretty much forever. (I still remember a time when there was a minor hysteria when Doordarshan decided to retelecast an episode of Mahabharat on Tuesday - people could not believe that if they'd missed the Sunday episode, they could watch it again!!). "Aamchi Maati, Aamchi Manasa" was *the* program. (It had a pretty catchy theme song!)
The rainy season meant one thing to me - Wimbledon! Thanks to my dad, I was infused with this absolute sense of devotion/fascination/reverence toward Wimbledon. Nothing was more fun than coming home from school on a dark, rainy afternoon, and watching the semi-finals of Wimbledon in near darkness. Somehow, Prime Sports' (now Star Sports) full blown, overanalysed 2 week coverage never came close to DD's "Semi-Finals and Finals only" coverage.
And then you had those magical "National Integration" videos. This one took me ages to find :
Some of the shots are still pretty spectacular - especially the one with the deer leaping with P.T. Usha running. I remember my mom would always go a little weak at the knees when Venkat took the torch ;). For some reason, it always seems to me that Prakash Padukone looks like he got lost with the torch at the end.
And then there were the classic ads - the Liril girl, "Hamara Bajaj", "Pan Pasand", "Fevicol", "Vicco turmeric" & Rasna. And who can forget this all time classic :
Nor this piece - a brilliant ad!
And then there was cricket. One day cricket was easy enough to understand, but test cricket, with its concept of two innings was a deep, dark mystery. I recall being stumped as to what a victory by "an innings" meant. Upon consultation with an older friend (who went for "cricket coaching", and, therefore was wise in the ways of the game), I was informed that an "innings" consisted of 40 runs. Therefore, "an innings an 132 runs" victory margin meant a 172 run victory margin. Why then did they not call it a "four innings and 12 run" victory? I couldn't get an answer to that.
My earliest memories are of the succession of heartbreaking matches of the 1992 World Cup. Not the best way for a young kid to be indoctrinated into the nation's favorite passion. But the white ball zinging around, the crack of the bat on the ball, the colored uniforms & the athletic fielding combined with a scoreboard that counted runs in real time & a duck that appeared occasionally made the viewing irresistable.
It was probably around this time that we were introduced to Sachin Tendulkar. Not knowing much about cricket, one just assumed that this guy had pretty much being playing since time immemorial, the way people talked about him. The feeling of a nation holding its collective breath everytime he strode out to the crease was something that has to be experienced to be believed. Fortunately or unfortunately, the feeling ain't the same these days (Wow, I must be getting old!)
But, perhaps what I miss the most on TV is the ubiquitous, ever annoying yet much parodied : Rukawat ke liye khed hai. Wish I could find a video of that!
Television was so simple back then - pretty much everyone you knew watched the same programs, parents analysed the same newscasters, no matter how robotic the drone on the television was. The morning programs consisted of people doing exercise - which meant a sardarji in a grey jogging suit & some aunty in a blue jogging suit doing cross-toe touching(not exactly "Primebodies", but definitely interesting).
If you missed an episode of any TV serial - that was it, you'd missed it for pretty much forever. (I still remember a time when there was a minor hysteria when Doordarshan decided to retelecast an episode of Mahabharat on Tuesday - people could not believe that if they'd missed the Sunday episode, they could watch it again!!). "Aamchi Maati, Aamchi Manasa" was *the* program. (It had a pretty catchy theme song!)
The rainy season meant one thing to me - Wimbledon! Thanks to my dad, I was infused with this absolute sense of devotion/fascination/reverence toward Wimbledon. Nothing was more fun than coming home from school on a dark, rainy afternoon, and watching the semi-finals of Wimbledon in near darkness. Somehow, Prime Sports' (now Star Sports) full blown, overanalysed 2 week coverage never came close to DD's "Semi-Finals and Finals only" coverage.
And then you had those magical "National Integration" videos. This one took me ages to find :
Some of the shots are still pretty spectacular - especially the one with the deer leaping with P.T. Usha running. I remember my mom would always go a little weak at the knees when Venkat took the torch ;). For some reason, it always seems to me that Prakash Padukone looks like he got lost with the torch at the end.
And then there were the classic ads - the Liril girl, "Hamara Bajaj", "Pan Pasand", "Fevicol", "Vicco turmeric" & Rasna. And who can forget this all time classic :
Nor this piece - a brilliant ad!
And then there was cricket. One day cricket was easy enough to understand, but test cricket, with its concept of two innings was a deep, dark mystery. I recall being stumped as to what a victory by "an innings" meant. Upon consultation with an older friend (who went for "cricket coaching", and, therefore was wise in the ways of the game), I was informed that an "innings" consisted of 40 runs. Therefore, "an innings an 132 runs" victory margin meant a 172 run victory margin. Why then did they not call it a "four innings and 12 run" victory? I couldn't get an answer to that.
My earliest memories are of the succession of heartbreaking matches of the 1992 World Cup. Not the best way for a young kid to be indoctrinated into the nation's favorite passion. But the white ball zinging around, the crack of the bat on the ball, the colored uniforms & the athletic fielding combined with a scoreboard that counted runs in real time & a duck that appeared occasionally made the viewing irresistable.
It was probably around this time that we were introduced to Sachin Tendulkar. Not knowing much about cricket, one just assumed that this guy had pretty much being playing since time immemorial, the way people talked about him. The feeling of a nation holding its collective breath everytime he strode out to the crease was something that has to be experienced to be believed. Fortunately or unfortunately, the feeling ain't the same these days (Wow, I must be getting old!)
But, perhaps what I miss the most on TV is the ubiquitous, ever annoying yet much parodied : Rukawat ke liye khed hai. Wish I could find a video of that!
posted by Firebringer at 12:32 AM
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