Total recall: Generation 198x

Apologies to the reader, but the Hipposaur sent us this in the morning mail. He insisted it made sense. Who should read this: Ideally, those born between in the 80's in (Eastern) India. Run along now, kids. Copied verbatim.

The '90's kool-aid acid test

Though some of the items apply mostly to the folks in East India, but a lot of us growing up in the 90's can also relate to it. Some are coined by the rag tag Hyd bunch (M, S and your's truly, that is), some have been pooled from various sources.

You know you're from familiar times if...

1) You have had kul er achar and/or amraa from the churan-walla near your school at some point of time

2) You know the words to In-pin-safety-pin and ikir mikir chaam chikir by heart

3) You have at least one Michael Jackson, and later a Celine Dion cassette

4) You worshipped Boyzone and thought they were the coolest thing ever until you discovered Rock

5) After the discovery of Rock, you thought Bryan Adams was the coolest thing ever

6) Even if you did not play too much, you idolised Kapil Dev

7) You remember the Dinesh ad with Sunil Gavaskar

8) You still have a stack of Suktara, Nonte Fonte, Batul the Great and Chacha Chaudhary comics stashed away somewhere

9) You know what kalo lojens means, and that you could buy them for 20 paise each

10) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life

11) You watched Cartoon Network (in English), and then TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended

12) You watched ALL the episodes of Small Wonder and Silver Spoon

13) If you are a girl, you collected postcards of filmstars

14) You still call Mumbai, Bombay

15) Your tryst with shoes were limited to Bata Naughty boy/ Ballerina

12) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each

13) You know who Top Cat was

14) You have played Kumir Danga, Colourman and Lock and key

15) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand Pokemon, ever

16) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it

17) You have taken a ride on a double decker bus

18) You know the song Made in India by Alisha Chinoi

19) You learnt LOGO in school!

20) You have used leaky Artex/Camlin fountain pens, while Wing Sung/Hero ones were reserved for exams. You also know what Chelpark Royal Blue looks like on school uniforms

21) You often used terms and phrases like 'ey bawa', 'same to you with no returns', 'katti katti' and ‘shame shame, puppy shame'

22) You loved and laughed at David Dhawan and Govinda movies

23) Kissing scenes in Hindi films involved flowers and/or gardens in some way

24) You have seen Titanic at least 12 times

25) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever

26) You still have a stamp album/slambooks locked away in the cupboard

27) You had a collection of 'recorded' cassettes, with at least one Eagles/Richard Marx song in it

28) You spent afternoons watching Knight Rider, Robocop, Streethawk on DD2

29) Your idea of being spoiled was limited to the biggest Cadbury bar you got on your birthday and had to share with all your cousins

30) You know how just awesome Kwality ice creams were

31) You grew up on Fun Munch, Binnie's chips and Uncle Chips

32) You know what Fun Munch lime and spice flavour tastes like

26) You remember the Orissa cyclone, even though you didn’t know what a cyclone was

35) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. Hot Wheels came a close second, and were available for 22 Rupees a piece

36) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word

37) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness

38) You know what Mouri Lojens, Roll-a-Cola and Phantom/Charlie Sweet cigarettes taste like

39) You have seen PC Sorcar (Junior) shows in winter

40) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.

43) Drinking Thums Up meant you were a big boy/girl, and you know exactly how awesome Gold Spot was

44) Speaking of drinks, you have grown up on Bijoligrill Ice Cream Sodas, and Campa Cola made sense to you

45) You watched Baywatch on Star TV (back when it was Star TV) even though (or because) your parents said you shouldn’t watch it

46) You bought packets of potato chips for the specific purpose of collecting Tazos. And you had Tazos depicting everyone from Confucius to Daffy Duck to Daffy Duck dressed as Confucius

47) You have had at least one family member with an Ambassador Mark II with the cool steering-side gear. Other contenders include the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini and The Fiat. The Contessa was cool because it was bigger

48) You have heard plays on Prasar Bharati

49) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better

50) You loved Fuzen gum. Earlier on, World Cup bubble gum was the way to go

51) You bought dalimguli/hojmi guli from the parar dadur dokan, and every para had a dadur dokan

52) Temporary tattoos made you an overnight rebel

53) You have taken a train ride to Shantiniketan, on Bolpur Express

54) School breaks meant Chinese Whispers

55) You had at least one Nelco tv (Or as Dam points out, Telerama), which was later replaced with a BPL tv in colour

56) You had to watch Chitrahaar on Sundays with the family, while summer vacations were synonymous with Chuti Chuti

57) You played and obsessed over Bagatully, our version of the pinball, and eventually lost the little steel ball that came with the box

58) Business was THE indoor game, while elder cousins were cool because they aced at carom

59) You Know what Edwards Gripewater was, and loved the ad. Tumi jokhon choto chile, tomakeo khayiechi.

60) You have had a taste of Chutki, even though it was taboo

61) You went to school in a carpool Ambassador car or a murir tin minivan, where antakshari was invariably the order of the day

62) Mario, Tetris and Contra (for the boys) means something to us

63) Every girl had one poster of a Cricketer or Shah Rukh Khan. Boys thrived on Sportstar pullouts

64) Hero cycles, period

65) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection

66) You have been to Appu Ghar if you ever visited Delhi, Jhilmil in Calcutta

67) Return gifts meant a candy, pencil, scented eraser and came in small colourful paper packets tied up in string

68) Stinky gas balloons were a must do in Durga Pujo

69) Pujo also meant Bhepus and Cap Pistols

70) You know what jhal chips were

71) You gorged on Chatar Matar and Swad candies

72) You would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and really think that Undertaker had 7 lives

73) All school bags/raincoats were from Duckback and were square in shape. Water bottles meant Milton. All water bottles and tiffin boxes had strange cartoon characters that were hybrid versions of seven or eight different characters, and you still bought them, because a green man with a water pistol, boots, a jet-pack, Johnny bravo hair, a rajasthani mustache, gloves, and underwear (long johns) over his pants, called 'Mr. X' was OBVIOUSLY a status symbol

74) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle

75) Fevers meant your mom fed you tengri stew and Barley water

76) You remember the doodh doodh ad and also the roz khao andey ads

77) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Goosebumps, Sweet Valley series

78) Your first introduction to Tintin was through Anandamela in Bengali

79) Railway stations meant Archie comics from Wheeler bookstores

80) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously, some of you sat at home and kept score

81) Extended family tv time meant Ramayan, Mahabharat and Sree Krishna

82) After you went to sleep, your parents would watch English films you knew were not meant for you

83) Every house had a VCP or a VCR invariably from Akai or Funai

84) Every neighbourhood had video cassette parlours

85) In the later 90s, you religiously followed Hip Hip Hooray on Zee

86) You played 'name place animal thing' in school

87) You waited for Friendship Day and friendship bands

88) You could party like a rockstar with 10 Rupees

89) School fests were the place to be. The best. Period

90) Catholic school kids would remember changing into civil dresses “coloured clothes” and run away from schools

91) You have played Ranna Bati at some point of time

92) If you were a boy, you would know what hand cricket means, where the bat and ball are replaced by the palm and a cambiss ball. Girls played the ever superior 'Book Cricket'.

93) If you were a girl you would have had a doll married off with much fanfare, probably to your best friend's favourite doll

94) Invariably enough there would be one desk/bench in school that had the epitaph “in memory of all those who died waiting for the bell to ring.”

95)You have been to Diamond Harbour or the zoo on a picnic

96) You have taken a tram ride, just for the heck of it

97) You have known the taste of badam bhaja in a paper thonga

98) Multiplexes meant nothing to you, as long as there was New Empire, Globe and Lighthouse

99) Flury's was the ultimate 'once a year' extravagance your parents let you indulge in. You had to earn it

100) Sunday breakfasts meant gorom jilipi, kochuri and cha

101) Your first watch was probably a plastic digital, and anybody with a Casio was understandably, cool

List of honourable mentions would also include:

102) The Complan boy/girl ad,

103) First taste of rebellion through (mostly) Charminar cigarettes,

104) Kalyani Black label - the beer that existed before all the Tuborgs and Carlsbergs of the world

105) Toblerone, the esoteric triangle of chocolatey awesomeness that was only permitted thanks to NRI relatives.

106) Also, boasting of NRI relatives was big, back in the days.

107) Ruff and Tuff Jeans! (Thanks, Moses)

108) We also recall every family having some cousin that went to a NIIT/APTECH centre

109) Speaking of Casio, every thing imported was Made In Japan and every family had one strange variant of the Casio synthesizer keyboard.

110) Finally, when the Internet came to India, we all remember the cyber cafe craze and how every successful connection was preceded by a strange electronic sound comprising of buzz, hum and what sounded like Kraftwerk

Hope this made you smile. That was pretty much what defined our generation. The small joys of life. No amount of Coffee Days, multiplexes, Playstation PS3s or grown up affectations can give back what we grew up with and loved

=)

Anon

Small update folks, anonymous posting is now open. The Hipposaur now respects your right to privacy.

On a more personal front, the Hipp is now a little younger, 26 to be precise. He spent the day at work. Rather, he spent the day proofing and checking text on the screen and the page, take it as you will. At night, old and new friends congregated for cakes (yes, there was a cake) and cigarettes. Irony is, the Hipposaur missed out on the 'surprise', being brain fried and desperately in need of smokes. So there he was, late as usual, while his friends made a beeline for the door. "We waited for a long time for you to turn up. Here's your cake. Got work tomorrow. Goodnight."

Surprises, they're so nasty when plans fall apart. Paste that smile in place and grow up, dude. Happy birthday, and same to you.

Hipposaur approves

A friend once said, if you can come home from work, while still clinging on to your sanity and get a good night's sleep, you know you are doing a good job at life.

Another said, at the end of the day (literally) you don't really need much beyond a full belly and a nice place to sleep on for as long as you want.

The Hipposaur likes having such friends.

Put a lid on it

This happens to be one of those posts that have been bugging the Hipposaur (now grown into a fuzzy purple mass) for quite some time. Having lived in a city peppered with convenience stores since the last four years, life could not have been better for our fuzzy friend. That is one of those annoyingly urbane habits that the Hipp has developed of late: browsing through convenience stores; specifically, convenience stores that sell groceries. Nevertheless, the bugger's from Red Bengal ain't he, you might ask, dear reader, why would he do that to himself? Wouldn't he be better off touting a jhola and rushing off to the nearest local produce kirana for his weekly grocery fix?

Truth is, this being a blog would inevitably verge on the confessional, ergo, we ask for your patience.

Truth is, the Hipp is a visual creature, easily excited by bright lights and colourful shelves. The phoren-cutting grocery supermarket therefore becomes his weekly shot of quick-fix-capitalism that helps him trudge through the week in a relative state of functionality. Yes, a shame, but he admits it - the Hipp is a grocery whore, who cannot quite help himself, despite the menacing threat from hawk-eyed employees. And that's where the story gets interesting.

Truth is, clueless employees at any big store freak out the Hipp. Far removed from the neighbourhood kaku selling suspiciously neon-orange labenchus (that is candy for the uninitiated) in south Calcuttan suburbs; the new age convenience store employee is a wholly unexpected force to be reckoned with. Right from the young bunch of ladies caked with way too much foundation who insist on selling a rather hirsute male (the Hipp, that is) skin toners and vegetable protein shampoos, to the obligatory guy at the grocery aisle who will disappear in a cloud of smoke the moment you ask him anything, the Hipposaur has reasons to be afraid. Yet he still stalks the supermarket shelves with a needle and a spoon.

Truth is, supermarket employees are honest folks trying to make ends meet, who share seats while still clutching on to their sweat-stained Hyderabad Central emblazoned caps at the commute, who'll probably strike a decent conversation about current affairs if you make the effort. This is the face of the new urban have-nots, a sizeable pool of unskilled employees at the service sector. However, when they are in the aisle, the Hipposaur is afraid. Right from the eager clerk who would relentlessly spray perfume on strips of paper at the eponymous section, even if you simply want to see the bright bottles (colours are good), to the grinning young man who'll keep nodding to anything you ask him, the supermarket-slash-multi brand store is an esoteric and highly confusing social space. Befuddled? You should be.

Truth is, the Hipposaur does not quite know how to deal with the young lad who will rattle off basenotes and topnotes at the drop of a hat at the perfume section, all the while aware of the fact that the lad in question probably could never afford the decanter of Issey Miyake he's trying so hard to sell. Add to this the fact of the Hipposaur's fuzzy recollections of the abysmal working conditions of employees (damn the stint at the newspaper!), blend this with his general discomfort at uniformed individuals staring him down while making purchases and you have the perfect recipe for social awkwardness.

Truth is, the supermarket system works on the Big Brother ethic, with the clueless employee in the red cap automatically becoming the inevitable front-end punching bag for their well-heeled customers. They are trained to act the way they do, and hang around your neck only because the big man in the suit told them to do so, never mind if its carrots, or Cool Water by Davidoff.

Truth is, the clueless employee in question probably never grew up in a world governed by packaged vegetables and eau de toilette. As the Hipposaur makes his way to the express checkout, a niggling discomfort remains. But hey, someone’s gotta do the dirty job, right? With such capitalist-Zen-sedative explanations abound, troubled souls like the Hipposaur can be at peace, until the next mall visit, that is. After all, he cannot go cold turkey, not after bearing witness to the wonders of packaged carrots and Cool Water by Davidoff. One of these days, he might even burst out of the pro-cap-brahminical closet...

(The author confesses of never having actually used Cool Water by Davidoff. He has, however, pestered employees to give him a whiff of said product, and then deftly pocketed the tester strip thereafter.)

what's up with the Hipp?

From an account narrated in first person from the Hipposaur's snout, scripted by Little Blue Men who were (quite obviously) high on pencil shavings:

LBM: So, Hipp, what's up?

FGFH: Not much of an update from my side, since beyond work, there's little time to do anything else. As you know, the commute from my house to the office takes around 45-50 minutes, so that's around an hour and a half wasted every day. Since travelling on a bus is usually a boring affair, I clamber on to buses which have space for sitting, and then plug in my audio device (which looks like a squarish testicle). Being out of the television loop, I download what seems to me as 'new' music from the Internet, which is availed from the Computer device they let me use (bless them!).

Now the reason this reply comes after a delay is the fact that the keyboard repulses me these days, considering I spend a hefty chunk of my day before it. So apologies. In other news, I have been trying to revive the cooking habit, and whipped up a mean pork vindaloo last weekend.

Anyway, back to the bus trip: I might have told you that I had started reading all the accumulated stuff on my shelf. The latest discovery being a Canadian author called Robertson Davies. Do try and read up some of his works if you can, very dense texts filled with allusions to antiquity - as some one aptly descibed "a real pleasure to flip though".

Stern looking fella, is he not?

At the end of the proverbial day, I've slowly realised that I'm growing old - not a kindly thought, considering I'm gonna be 26 (in human terms, that is), which leaves the road to dreaded 30 in just another four odd years. Its not the imaginary post-modern dread of the number (as seen from many episodes of Friends, a very enjoyable past time, I must admit); but rather a disturbing realisation that I'm not as young as I wished I was - My father is around 63, while mom is close - I have responsibilities that I would have been only too happy to not bear. Though I would not be required to send money home regularly for the time being, I would be expected to create a bank of savings, investments and think of a 'future'. Added to that is the growing sense of the sheer worthlessness of academia in the real world of buses and sweat and chaos. I see these young kids out of college get into high paying jobs and it strikes me that whatever pretensions of knowledge I might have had during MA, be it theories, or Art or music - its worthless in a system driven entirely on the basis of career-related ambitions.

Post Graduation is so over rated.

Maybe its too late for realising what was pretty much evident, but it still strikes me - Why would the guy on street care about culture when his sole preoccupation is to feed himself and ensure his kids go to school. Don't get me wrong - the everyman I refer to is not only the typical struggling work assistant; he is the guy driving the new Honda, the guy beating up his wife in a slum and the old chap worried about his daughter's marriage. The average Indian gives a shit about the pursuit of humanities - the newspapers don't give a shit about Humanities, so long as you can string a sentence in English, and more importantly, get there in time and ask the right questions.

So are we airheads with no practical use in a social order driven on money and the survival instinct? What has academia to offer to better our lives? I mean, look at it this way - I stayed in a subsidised hostel room, which cost me 90 Rupees a month, including water and electricity - being funded out of grants that came out of taxpayer's pockets, as with any public University. What has that made us? Jobseekers in content writing jobs and newspapers? College teachers doing the same thing over and over again, teaching another batch of people about Blake and Shakespeare, but to what end?

I know we folks from the Liberal Arts like to think that the world has wronged us (have mercy!), since its so materially driven. But then again, think: what if the joke's on us? Considering how many people are perfectly happy being in a daily grind of work - party on weekends - work again routine, I seriously doubt any iota of intelligence I might have deluded myself into believing I might have possessed.

End of rant. As you were.

LBM: Thanks for the update, we are sure our readers will be greatly amused.

FGFH: Anytime

Big Hunt

You never know what a bit of impulsive hunting around might turn up. And by hunting, ladies and gents, we mean rummaging through tons of junk in search of vintage treasures. Confused? We are talking about sniffing around for old…fountain pens. Ever since the proverbial bug bit the impressionable ol’ Hipposaur, he was, as they say, never quite the same.

The Hipposaur suggests you follow the pink splotches on the map to score good deals. Click to enlarge. Image courtesy Google Maps

So one rather mundane Sunday morning (by morning we imply post 11:27 am) the Hipposaur boards a big blue bus down to Old City. Now the Old City in Hyderabad is one of those rare places that you will find a bi-weekly “chor-bazaar”, as its known here, a flea market, if you will. The market spans the area known as pathergatti till the approach to the Charminar and consists of hawkers setting up shop in makeshift plastic sheets.
What can you expect to find here? Well, ask and you shall be overwhelmed. From broken pieces of cassette tapes, wafer biscuits, telephone sets, bicycle wheels, heavy machinery to vintage collectibles, you’ll find it all here at the Sunday market. Need a charger for your cell phone for 20 bucks? Step right in. Have a fetish for collecting empty perfume bottles? This is the place to be. However, as the word goes, what you see is exactly what you get – no testing, no guarantees. Perchance you prefer the finer things in life, like shards of printed circuit boards, or keyboards without keys, the Sunday market fits the bill perfectly. But once in a while, with enough patience and a few hours at your disposal – you might just discover some authentic drool-worthy objects of desire. The Hipposaur, now having assumed the role of crazed fountain pen collector, at this point decides to jump in.

We spot him rummaging through what looks like bicycle bells and spectacle frames and lo and behold! A clean Parker 45 fountain pen – and the bloody thing works too! For 90 Rupees, he pockets the pen and strides on towards the swelling crowd. Towards Machli Kaman, the north gate of Charminar crossing, he encounters a bunch of shops under the building portico on the left. Yes, they stock pens. Yes the Hipposaur has no self restraint. Ergo, after rummaging around for some 50 minutes, he walks away with a Parker 21 with a broken filler and bent nib (Rs 100), a slightly brassed but smooth-as-hell Sheaffer Triumph Imperial (Rs 250) and (breathe in breathe out) a vintage Sailor pen with a cool 14 carat gold flexible nib (Rs 100…what?!).





And now, kids, for a bit of history. In 1911, a Japanese gentleman, by the name of Kyugoro Sakata was introduced to the fountain pen, as demonstrated by a British sailor who was passing by at that time. Now our man was so impressed by the design and function that he decided to start making such instruments in Japan, using local resources. Till date, the factory of the The Sailor Pen Company at Hiroshima still makes fine writing instruments that have acquired somewhat of a status overhaul in recent times. Now that you are wiser, relax and check out the picture of the Hipposaur’s “Sunday haul” (term courtesy Mr. Vinod Ekbote)



A pretty neat deal, eh? And come free with a moral lesson – patience not only pays, but unloads your rather impoverished wallet in no time.

I see colours...

The Hipposaur was bored. Plus there were some readers who were sending the obligatory death treat. Ergo, New colours(TM) are up, ladies and gentlemans. Enjoi!