Total recall: Generation 198x




Children of the 70s and the 80s who grew up in the 90s, here's your annual dose of nostalgia.

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 shops, malls, multiplexes, selfies or grown up affectations can give back what we grew up with and loved

=)

7 comments:

asmita said...

zimbly awhahahasome!!!

GreyVitriol said...

So true...
Thank you for this.


PS:
Washing powder Nirma,
Detergent tikia Nirma.
Doodh si safedi,
Nirma se aayi,
Rangeen kapde bhi khil khil jaaye!
Sabki pasand: Nirmaaaa
Washing powder Nirma,
Detergent tikia Nirma.
Nirma!

Didn't look it up. Still remember the Doordarshan ads. :)
Every. Single. Note.

(Speaking of Doordarshan, do you guys remember the Doordarshan tune? And the Central Government's ads on national integration (mile sur mera tumhara..., ek chidiya, anek chidiya...), safety helmets (the one with the sledgehammer smashing the coconut), garibi hatao, etc. ?

Anonymous said...

The non-mobile, non-Internet time, was definitely another era.
The pager came and left in a glimpse.
And also the marks of our generation, the Bajaj scooter and Maruti 800, have stopped production recently.

Anonymous said...

brought tears of nostalgia in my eyes. was stunned to realize that i said a yes or that true to each and every one of em. brilliant collection of the tit-bits of our times. thanks hippo! merci!

candysa said...

ummm.. awesomeness.. except chitrahar was wednesdays if im not mistaken.. sundays were reserved for superhit muqabla

Fully grown fuzzy Hipposaur said...

Thanks for the good words, folks!

Arindam said...

Brilliant! So many fond memories - had to share this on my Facebook