Changing times

It was not a sudden moment of realization. Rather, I was in my familiar world, with my overenthusiastic chauffeur in my old car, travelling through the same road I take daily..But something was knocking at my middle-aged door. I wondered if it was midlife crisis! But the feeling was more visual than emotional. Then it suddenly struck my mind – the verandahs of all the homes and the shops were all bathed in white light instead of the golden yellow of yesteryear’s bulbs! The bulb-culture was all but gone! CFL now was fast making way for LED, and here I was wondering about the warm glow of yellow bulbs....Fine fossil of humanity am I!!

But then, my kids relish Kinderjoy!  Other than Dairy Milk chocolates, most of the familiar treats of my childhood are gone. There are no Phantom Cigarettes, no Poppins, no Bubble Gum, no Amul Chocolates in the familiar dull gold wrappers (“a gift from someone you love”)..

We've gotten used to touch-screens, blazingly fast Internet, and the ability to have the world at our fingertips in seconds. I look at the sleek Samsung S6 Edge handset I possess, and somehow I no longer feel the glee I usually feel while caressing its smooth contours. While exactly who invented the phone is a topic of debate, the first patent was awarded to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. They have evolved from rotary dial models to smart phones. I miss the black analogue telephone set which graced the low wooden table at my grandmother’s home.

Last Sunday, I found myself unlocking the forgotten shelf of my old almirah. I picked up my Sony Walkman. I tried in vain to tell my kids what purpose my blue ‘Walkman’ served. I remember reading long back that the Walkman was invented for the co-chairman of Sony who wanted to be able to listen to his favourite operas on plane trips. It was initially marketed as the ‘Soundabout’ in North America, but the appellation “Walkman” got stuck to it.

Mr. Kalita, the clerk of the school where I studied, endorsed a black typewriter which belted out our dreaded results at the end of each term. While some emotional nerds still swear by them, most writers remember when they swore at them and have happily moved on. 

The classrooms too have metamorphosed, and how! There are no dusters, no chalks (I remember the coloured ones which were ‘premium’ and the white ones that were ‘regular’). ‘Smart boards’ followed ‘Whiteboards’, and it seems the final nail to the coffin that housed the carcass of the ‘Blackboard’ was hammered long ago, especially in the cities...

My usually strict father mellowed down by a few degrees when he listened to his favourite songs in the Record Player.Vinyl was the dominant music format for the 20th century. Father explained that vinyl was perfected over the years to be as acoustically correct and cheap to press as possible. While I heard they are still in use by DJ’s and radio stations, and by some random antique collectors, records have for the most part been relegated to the kabadi  sale heap. 

Getting to Star Road on Super Mario was my ultimate moment of triumph. I marvelled at He-man’s muscles. I chewed spinach because Popeye did so, and wished to swim in the coin collection of Uncle Scrooz. Now Oggy and Shin-shan rule the idiot box, and Doraemon is the ultimate hero.

Back then, playing outdoors was actual ‘playing’.  There was no overdose of cartoons or video games to be glued to. Maybe there was a dearth of choices. Not that we minded. We left behind a trail of home-made oblong dolls, skipping ropes...  We would be jumping along in the dust, barefoot, with 10-paise sour Mortons or Poppins in our mouths, feeling as though we had run off with everything of our hometown that was worth having. Now childhood is swept under Kashmiri carpets and elevators are built over the playgrounds where we played ghariyal-paani.... 

A mêlée of memories cloud my usually lucent mind - a coin being inserted through the slit of the earthen ‘piggy-bank’, being pushed on a swing, the way it felt to be picked up and spun around, the deserted streets on Sunday mornings when ‘Mahabharata’ was aired on Doordarshan.....I reach home as the twilight cloudless sky glistens with the sparkling stars. As soon I ring the doorbell, my five-year-old son unfurls his unending questionnaire about the stars and the universe. I realize that by the time we began to understand enough about what the world to ask the right questions, our visit is over, and someone else is visiting, asking the same questions...And as I rue over my childhood heroes becoming older men with ordinary problems, I accept that in the life of everyone there is a limited number of experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a permanent ink; and in the long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew.