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

=)