The good ol' list

ani wrote this today. and when he told me he actually wrote 75 things, i was stunned. that's a huge number, ain't it. and he made me smile all through it. if you've really grown up in the 90's, you can really connect to it. writing that is a huge feat and i can never do it. ani.

here it goes.

its a remainder of all those 'good ole times' when life was less complicated, more fun and revolved essentially around bubble gums, cartoons, 'action shoes' and sachin tendulkar. and when we were far too shy to talk to girls, not yet inquisitive about sex and were happy if allowed to watch tv till 10.00.

prob'ly a few years form now, looking back, i might just say teenage was great too. you never know.

read it and let him know what its like. he'll like it.

P.S- to our own superhero. to shaktimaan.

--

I realised anirudh ain't making his blog public. so here is the piece.

You Know You Grew Up in India in the 90s When...

1) You know the words to ‘In-pin-safety-pin’ and ‘akkad-bakkad’ by heart

2) Cricket is almost a religion for you, and you idolize at least one of Kapil Dev/Rahul Dravid/Sachin Tendulkar/Saurav Ganguly

3) You have read at least some Chacha Chaudhary or Tinkle comics

4) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life. And you can immediately recognize the character when you see him.

5) You have some ‘NRI’ relatives.

6) You couldn’t wait for it to be December so you could have the Toblerone chocolates your NRI relatives brought you

7) You watched Cartoon Network, and then the late night movies on TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended.

8) You watched corny dubbed versions of Small Wonder, Silver Spoon, and I Dream of Jeanie

9) You were THRILLED when McDonald’s opened in your neighborhood (or even eight kilometers away)

10) Your first Pizza's were at Pizza corner and Burger's at John's bakery (chermas)

11) A visit to Pizza Hut used to mean a special treat

12) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each

13) You still remember the theme song to Hum Paanch.

14) You have played hours upon hour of Pukdam-pakdai, oonch-neech, kho-kho, ‘Doctor, doctor, help us!’, ‘Lock and key’

15) You have played ‘Uma Joshi’ more times than you can remember.

16) Dog ‘in’ the bone was your favorite co-ed game.

17) Much of your free time in school was spent playing UNO.

18) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand why your younger siblings were obsessed with Pokemon and the other Japanese trends that followed.

19) Your summer vacations were often synonymous with visiting your grandparents

20) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it.

21) Bole mere lips, I love uncle Chips!

22) You know the song ‘Made in India’ by Alisha Chinoi

23) You have seen many many many episodes of ‘Antakshri’ on Zee TV and know the only thing constant in the show is Anu Kapoor.

24) Many evenings have been spent watching little kids gyrate vulgarly on Boogie Woogie on Sony.

25) You were the coolest thing in class if you had a computer in your house while it was still the 90s.

26) You learnt LOGO in school!

27) You couldn’t wait to start 4th/6th standard so you could start writing with PENS instead of with pencils!

28) You often use terms and phrases like ‘kutti’, ‘abba’, ‘same to you, back to you, with no returns’, and ‘shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name.’

29) You most probably saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at the cinema at least once. You also fantasized about singing songs in mustard fields as in the movie.

30) You have seen David Dhawan and Govinda movies and laughed at them.

31) You have said ‘haw’ or ‘haw ji ki pwji’ when you saw people kissing in English movies

31) You have seen Titanic at least 12 times.

32) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever.

33) You remember the Orissa cyclone, even though you didn’t know what a cyclone was.

34) You remember the Gujarat earthquake very clearly and could possibly tell everyone EXACTLY what you were doing when the earthquake occurred (yes, this happened in 2001, January 26, 2001, to be exact -- but this group is about the things that Indian kids that GREW UP in the 90s remember and identify with).

35) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. You just wanted more more more and more. And how can I forget Hot Wheels, for both boys and girls? I personally have a collection of over 200 little Hot Wheels cars.

36) You have worn Osh-Kosh B’gosh and United Colours of Benetton clothes while growing up. And you thought ‘imported’ clothes were definitely way better than ‘made in India’ clothes (never mind that a lot of clothes brought from overseas by NRI relatives were actually made in India, before ‘Made in China’ started appearing on EVERY existing thing)

37) You know the words to ‘Posham Paa’, and like it better than ‘Oranges and Lemons’ even though you’d sing the latter to sound cool (see 32 above).

38) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word.

39) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness.

40) You have tried to convince people around you to not burst crackers on Diwali, and then gone straight back home and burst them yourself.

41) You have had endless packets of Parle Gluco G biscuits, and of Brittania Little Hearts biscuits.

42) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.

43) There were no Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma- Bata and Liberty was the way to go for your sports shoes.

44) You have probably consumed more Frooti in your lifetime than there is oil in Iraq.

45) You watched Baywatch on Star World 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) For the longest time, the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini, THE Fiat, and THE Ambassador were the only cars you saw on the road, and the Contessa was cool because it was bigger.

48) You would literally jump up in excitement if you ever chanced upon an imported car (Oh my gosh, is that really a MERCEDES?)!

49) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better.

50) You chewed Big (big) Babool and/or Boom Boom Boomer chewing gum. They were bright pink and disgusting tasting, but you loved them for the temporary tattoos.

51) Talking of temporary tattoos, you sometimes had contests with your classmates about who had more tattoos on their arm, leg, knee, hand, forehead, wherever.

52) You thought Mario and Tetris were the coolest things ever invented, especially if you were a boy.

53) You knew that having the latest Hero or Atlas bicycle would make you the coolest kid on the block.

54) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection.

55) You have, at some point of time, worn GAP clothes (real or fake) like SRK in KKHH.

56) Seemingly senseless acronyms like SRK, DDLJ, KKHH actually make sense to you..

57) You have at some point debated who was more beautiful- Aishwarya or Sushmita.

58) If you lived inHyderabad, you went picnicing at Lumbini park, or Go-Karting at Runway 9 and couldn't think how you could get any cooler than that.

59) Baskin Robbins ice-cream was THE thing to have!

60) You know what Campa Cola is. And you also knew that Coca Cola was THE drink.

61) When you would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and really think that Undertaker had 7 lives and he made an "actual" appearance in the Akshay Kumar- starrer Khiladiyon ka Khiladi.

62) When all backpacks (or 'schoolbags') and 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 wih 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.

63) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle.

64) You remember the Nirma girl.

65) You remember the 'doodh doodh' ad and also the 'roz khao andey' ads.

66) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Babysitters Club, Animorphs, Goosebumps, Sweet Valley series, Judy Blumes, and Tintin, or Archie comics. Because naturally, reading foreign authors made you much cooler than reading Tinkle.

67) Towards the late 90s (1998-99) at least some of us started our Harry Potter obsessions!

68) You absolutely HAD to go to Essel World if you went to Mumbai! "Essel World mein rahoonga main, ghar nahin nahin nahin jaaonga main!"

69) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously. The smarter ones amongst you actually took part in it and had your entire school and your entire extended families watch you on it!

70) "Jungle jungle baat chali hai, pata chala hai. Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai, phool khila!"

71) Maggi 2 Minute Noodles = ultimate snack (and tiffin, lunch, dinner)!

72) If you grew up in the early 90s, you recall the nation's obsession with Mahabharata on TV

73) In the later 90s, you religiously followed Hip Hip Hooray on Zee. Maybe Just Mohabbat on Sony too.

74) You eagerly awaited Friendship Day, so you could give friendship bands to all your friends, and get bands from them in return. Then, of course, those with the most bands loved to show them off (and on Rakhi, boys with the most Rakhis loved showing those off too!)

75) This list made you smile. :)