Thursday 9 April 2009

The Lost World...Rediscovered

As I sit here trapped in my world of PhD, I often dream of the life I hope to get back and while I dream I think of all the activities, pictures, programmes, conventions that I associate with home or my happy world...Of course, some of them have disappeared and have changed...but I still find joy from the memories...

Orkut and Facebook have been such wonderful creations and have re-united us with friends we were very close to in school but had lost touch with. One such friend made a reference to my birthday parties...ah yes, I used to have birthday parties, the day when all my friends (and families if my mom had met them) would come to my house. The day when even my aunt used to be nice to me... I particularly remember the roses on my class VI birthday cake and S making a special request for it...Ah I wonder where S has disappeared...she is one person who I have not been able to get back in touch with...even the wonderful invention of Orkut has been challenged in keeping the interest of S...

I also remember the mangoes (which I was not too keen on) but the guests seemed to love the mangoes... I would see my relatives totally enjoying the aamer aanti (mango seed & pulp)...and complementing Ma on the payesh (Indian rice pudding)... I remember little 3 year old Ria singing 'Haati birthday to you' and completing the every line of the song 'Ek doosre se karte hain pyar' with an emphatic hum! She was such a darling little kid, she still is, only now she is an 18 year old lovely, attractive (maybe even a young man's darling) lady...

Birthdays of course, in those days provided all your friends the license to give you a wonderful joint present better known as birthday bumps! The act required your friends to somehow grab all four of your limbs and lift you up in the air and then return you back to the ground for n number of times (n being your age as on that day). On discovering our practice, some teachers suggested we should give birthday kisses... Oooohh my friends were definitely planning the bumps for me, but I probably got away with kisses...

I definitely miss the aam, payesh and (believe it or not) my lovely friends consulting and conspiring about gifting me the birthday bumps!!

SB has probably been to all my birthdays... SB lived nearby...we used to go to school in the same bus. She sang very well and she taught me loads of hindi songs. She would even write the lyrics of the then hit song and bring it for me. She taught me the tune of 'Tumse Milke'...(I still love that song) and 'Kabootar ja ja'. We used to be Salman Khan supporters as opposed to Aamir Khan supporters. Of course, I can't stand SK now, particularly when he decides to go au naturale in his choice of tops (or lack thereof) and post Lagaan/Dil Chahta Hai/Fanaa/Taare Zameen Par I have a lot more time for AK. I wonder if my friend SB shares my present views? SB is another friend who seems to be totally untouched by the Orkut/Facebook syndrome! Next time, I am in Kolkata, I must pass by her house...maybe she is married now, maybe she is living in some rather exotic country, maybe, maybe....

SB and I would discuss the movie that was shown on Doordarshan on Saturday evenings. Oh and how we looked forward to Chitrahaar on Wednesdays at 8pm. Chitrahaar showcased songs from different hindi films. Chitrahaar was our mid-week highlight. Of course, we were allowed to watch Chitrahaar because Thursday was a holiday for us. We had school on Saturdays instead. Saturday evenings, we could watch the hindi movie that was shown on DD of course with the news break in the middle. I do miss the music for Samachar, mostly because I can't remember what it sounded like. I found a DD channel here in UK - it said Rayat DD but the Samachar music has changed...replaced by some other...

When we were in class VIII satellite TV made it's presence felt. In all the metropolitan cities, we got a second channel DD Metro. This brought into our lives Superhit Muqabla! The ultimate hindi movie song - countdown show! This replaced the Chitrahaar frenzy, in fact multiplied the frenzy to watch movie song programmes. Superhit Muqabla used to telecast songs from newly released movies, and we could participate by voting for our No.1 song on competition postcards. I often wanted to send in my vote but I was too embarrassed to go to the post-office and buy a competition postcard. Now I wonder, why? I also wonder if Rangoli (another programme showcasing hindi film songs) is still shown on Sunday mornings?

It was SDM who was a year senior to us who introduced me to Shahrukh Khan in Circus. We hardly expected the SRK phenomenon then... although the dimple was a subject of a lot of talk as well as his dialogue from Fauji 'I say Chaps...' I remember the rage that was Baazigar and Darr (SRK films where he played negative roles)! There were lots of discussion on how, rather strangely we all supported the bad guy SRK and the rumour that Aamir Khan left Darr on realising the amount of fighting in the movie! Did Aamir Khan really decline Darr for the fight scenes, well after nearly 15 years AK's Ghajini seemed quite full of these fight scenes.

I met SDM again after all these years on Orkut and also RD and RD is still the die-hard fan of Aamir Khan that she used to be in school..

Fifteen years on sitting in a different part of the world, I often miss the world we had, the fun, the excitement we shared all those years ago... all those friends, reading the same books, watching the same programmes, arguing over inconsequential issues, whispering forbidden jokes - I realise that we may or may not repeat those acts - but feel rather pleased that the online networking sites were invented - and to discover all those friends again in this different phase of our lives... :)