The other day I happened to read a column in a newspaper about "the illusion of the past". The author seemed to be from my generation and was writing about how that illusion is just that an "Illusion". To those who glorify the past and here I mean specifically the decades of the sixties and the seventies - need to take a harder look at those decades.
For one who grew up in those decades, I would term them as the "deprived decades". Growing up partially in a big city like Delhi and partially in smaller Jaipur. The only window to the outside world in Jaipur, where I went to shcool, was the radio - mostly AIR, occasionally BBC and VOA. I remember staying awake late into the night listening to the VOA over a crackling transistor radio ( a huge technological advancement to the tube based radios!) for a direct feed from NASA as the first man landed on the moon in 1969. Contrast that with direct pictures over tv that now give u real time feeds. TV didnt exist and movies ( english ones ) came after a minimum of six months after their releases abroad. In Jaipur it took longer for the "latest" movies to arrive. Magazines were limited - the Illustrated Weekly of India ( pre Kushwant Singh phase) which printed your black and white wedding photo if you sent it to them! Sports & Pastime was the other magazine that was popular with us for obvious reasons. For "titilation" one of your friends would pass on to you a copy of Filmfare or Femina ! And that about completes the list of magazines - magazines in the vernacular in those days didnt merit serious consideration.
There was such limited choice in all the simple things that make schools so exciting these days and are available in large numbers and different qualities. Things like satchels, stationary, bags, writing instruments and so on are now available throughout the country - even in very small towns. We had a choice of two bags - one an aluminium bag and the other a First World War vintage webbed khaki soldier's backpack. Everyone carried lunch to school, not in fancy lunch boxes or tiffin carriers but in used JB Mangaram's toffee and sweets tins. How healthy, how nutritious - how boring !
These were the decades of India's total isolation from the outside world. Import substitution and strict controls on foreign exchange meant not even infrequent travel abroad. Thus going abroad was a big event - I remember my first look at a spanking new Boeing 747 ( the Jumbo) acquired by Air India sometime in 1970 thanks to Dad's friends in the Customs. I remember as I walked through the length of the plane and marvelled not just at the fact that the plane was fabulous but also that so many people were in it and all going "abroad". No wonder the craze for "imported' stuff and thier realtive value. No one will believe it today that not one boy in my class had a pair of Levi jeans and probably not more that a couple in the whole school !
What the deprived decades made most of us do was to take to reading - what alternatives did we have ! The school library became almost a daily habit and authors like Alistar Maclean, Helen MacInnes, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler etc were devoured like popcorn. Voracious reading became the order of the day and this allowed us to develop not just a facility with the language but also fired our imagination. The school was much more than merely a teaching shop, it was a place where one could look forward to for something interesting each day. Unlike schools these days which call in parents to complain about their children, in our case it was mostly parents seeking the schools intervention to keep their kids in check!
I will stop for now and perhaps talk more about the 70s in my next post.
For one who grew up in those decades, I would term them as the "deprived decades". Growing up partially in a big city like Delhi and partially in smaller Jaipur. The only window to the outside world in Jaipur, where I went to shcool, was the radio - mostly AIR, occasionally BBC and VOA. I remember staying awake late into the night listening to the VOA over a crackling transistor radio ( a huge technological advancement to the tube based radios!) for a direct feed from NASA as the first man landed on the moon in 1969. Contrast that with direct pictures over tv that now give u real time feeds. TV didnt exist and movies ( english ones ) came after a minimum of six months after their releases abroad. In Jaipur it took longer for the "latest" movies to arrive. Magazines were limited - the Illustrated Weekly of India ( pre Kushwant Singh phase) which printed your black and white wedding photo if you sent it to them! Sports & Pastime was the other magazine that was popular with us for obvious reasons. For "titilation" one of your friends would pass on to you a copy of Filmfare or Femina ! And that about completes the list of magazines - magazines in the vernacular in those days didnt merit serious consideration.
There was such limited choice in all the simple things that make schools so exciting these days and are available in large numbers and different qualities. Things like satchels, stationary, bags, writing instruments and so on are now available throughout the country - even in very small towns. We had a choice of two bags - one an aluminium bag and the other a First World War vintage webbed khaki soldier's backpack. Everyone carried lunch to school, not in fancy lunch boxes or tiffin carriers but in used JB Mangaram's toffee and sweets tins. How healthy, how nutritious - how boring !
These were the decades of India's total isolation from the outside world. Import substitution and strict controls on foreign exchange meant not even infrequent travel abroad. Thus going abroad was a big event - I remember my first look at a spanking new Boeing 747 ( the Jumbo) acquired by Air India sometime in 1970 thanks to Dad's friends in the Customs. I remember as I walked through the length of the plane and marvelled not just at the fact that the plane was fabulous but also that so many people were in it and all going "abroad". No wonder the craze for "imported' stuff and thier realtive value. No one will believe it today that not one boy in my class had a pair of Levi jeans and probably not more that a couple in the whole school !
What the deprived decades made most of us do was to take to reading - what alternatives did we have ! The school library became almost a daily habit and authors like Alistar Maclean, Helen MacInnes, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming, Eric Ambler etc were devoured like popcorn. Voracious reading became the order of the day and this allowed us to develop not just a facility with the language but also fired our imagination. The school was much more than merely a teaching shop, it was a place where one could look forward to for something interesting each day. Unlike schools these days which call in parents to complain about their children, in our case it was mostly parents seeking the schools intervention to keep their kids in check!
I will stop for now and perhaps talk more about the 70s in my next post.
