This post is a response to Santosh's strong arm tactics :)
I am not a guy who goes into a retrospective mode all too often.
I had no choice after being "strong-armed" into this post.Once I decided to reflect on the nineties, pangs of nostalgia came pouring in.
The nineties were my formative years.What I am today is a result of that period.For this and many other reasons , the decade is very close to my heart.
I miss the nineties per se. My life was in an upswing then.I had not encountered a major disappointment or a failure .That was the best period of my life.A period I would like to relive.
In absolute random order (I know it sounds like a quiz master announcing the list of finalists.Quizzing was one good that the nineties gave me) i have listed the best of the nineties.
The first thing that comes to my mind is the Academics. Nineties held a lot of promise.If I were to compare my expectations about college education and what I actually realized ..It's a very painful comparison.Without going into the
details let me just say life can be cruel and has been cruel.I enjoyed my classes then.My teachers then were all very committed , dedicated , decently informed and knew how to handle a class.So learning was a joyful experience.
Sometime in the mid to late nineties, I read R K Narayan's Swami and friends.Swami inspired me to move from the front to the backbenches.That's where I have been in all my classes after that.Trust me, the backbenches are the best and in fact the source of many of those high school gossips and rumors.
I had my last history class in the 90's.Many people hate history, primarily because they had the worst imaginable person as their history teacher.A stupid syllabus and an uninspiring teacher make for a dangerous combination.I was blessed with a wonderful teacher who went beyond the obvious, offered a lot of insights and more importantly, thought us all a few valuable lessons.
My math classes are also worth mentioning.I hated my maths teacher and I am sure everyone of my classmates felt the same way.He was not your classic cane-wielding,Blackboard ,chalk loving person.He had an aversion to the chalk and rarely if ever used it.Even while ensuring he did no or very little work, he made sure we were capable of solving all the sums. His theoretical geometry classes were very special.(For a moment ,turn away from the computer monitor and imagine how a person can teach geometry without using a black board.)One fine morning, our maths teacher was playing volley ball and was too tired to climb the stairs to our class.He called us to the lawn.We were supposed to learn tangent chord theorem. The class went thus: "This is a circle ( He drew a circle in the air).He drew a couple of lines touching/cutting through the circle and said the first line is a tangent and the next is a chord."All our eyes were blank .I resumed my sleep after that.My math classes defied all established norms of teaching, but I can proudly say my basic math skills are better than the average engineer.I use this opportunity to take my hats off and salute those teachers.
Throughout the nineties I remained a good student.My classmates looked upto me.It was all fun.The new millenium dawned and life took a turn for the worse.I am not sure if it was due to planetary realignment or bad luck or a lack of effort on my part, after the nineties I never really did well in class.I even gave up the pretense of studying for exams.
I miss my bicycle.In the mid nineties , when I was still in a school that was close to my house,I used to cycle to the school.While returning ,we used to roam around ,make a few pit stops buy a few chocolates , wafers and the all important 50paise/re 1 "pepsi" .As Santosh points out these were very popular then , but are not in vogue in the teenage social circles today.The wafers today are relegated to be used for distribution to visitors during family functions.I have not seen the wafers anywhere else .The wafer is like that 25p Orange color candy wrapped in a translucent cover that was ubiquitous once but today makes an appearance at just about the right time
for the independence day season.During weekends I used to cycle ten kilometres to my friend's place just to meet him n talk (people who have seen me in college , will have a tough time imagining me on a cycle, believe me I was in the Light weight category then)I have lost my enthusiasm for cycling now.
Where are those simple video game consoles now?Those were days when Mario was the best game.People went crazy seeing Mario gain strength after consuming that magic potion.The terminator video game console costed all of 650 bucks.The costliest devices then were a Sega and Nintendo consoles that came at slightly higher price.
The games were low on the graphics quotient but were immensely enjoyable.There was also a hand-held "Bricks" game that was very popular.Now,People have moved
on to "Snake" and playstation .Today if a teenager wants to connect a gaming device to the TV , he has to do it during non-megaserial hours.Most mothers will have a heart attack if they miss their daily dose of serials.We were lucky , we went crazy shooting at those aliens in the pre megaserial days.
It was a time when every kid was into philately and numismatics.Our quest for new, rare stamps were never ending.We tore some from the envelopes, we bought some.We roamed the streets, searched the back alleys for those little things.After I grew up and got an idea of power, politics and economics, I wondered at the unreal world of a philatelist.Stamps of the US, UK and other big countries were considered normal.Stamps of cambodia(Kampuchea),Somalia, Ethiopia were turn-ons.
Those days I used to read magazines like Gokulam,PCM etc.These mags carried a pen friends section.I used to send letters to unknown people in unknown places .Some of them replied.A lot of time was spent penning and mailing these letters.In this era of emails and orkut, I just can't imagine this.
We didnot have so many channels and so many programs.Choice was limited.But within that limited choice we got to see a lot of good stuff.I particularly liked the Mahabharatha and Ramayana telecasts.During the 90's the Mahabharatha was telecast in almost all major indian languages.I am not a spiritual person , but derived immense joy from watching those epics.I learnt something too.
Sports in the 90's were also more fun.We used to spend hours playing cricket.We were in a housing board complex . Not enough space to play a good game of cricket, so lotsa windows were broken.We were chased out of the roadside on numerous occasions.
Even to a viewer sports was more fun.It was fought on an even keel.Sampras didnot have a Federer like run.Australians were beatable.
Internet service was introduced in Madurai in 1999-2000.I would
consider Internet as my nirvana but others would view as the reason for my
downfall.(I will not enter into the gory details here)
When you look back and reflect on the past and find that many of the icons that defined your life once, are no longer considered fashionable, I am short of words to explain that feeling.Probably the best part of the decade was the values it instilled in people.That was the beginning of the IT era.Not many smooth talking,high earning software engineers were around.Most were employees of government agencies.They worked hard or hardly worked , but the money earned was very low.So other aspects of human life was respected.90's was a roller coaster, there were good periods followed by bad periods.So people learnt humility and also learnt live frugally.Things went for a toss at the turn of the century.Most of all , I miss the "upbringing" of the 90's.I think thats the biggest differentiator.
