Born in 80s - The last SANE Generation

We did not have Play stations, 99 television stations, flat screens, surround sound, mp3s, iPods, computers, cell phones and the Internet, ...but we had time to rest our head on our grandmas lap and listen to bed time stories, we had time to sit and watch chitrahar, rangoli, and saturday evening movies with our relatives and neighbours. We knew the music before the news at 7 in the radio.

Some nostalgic memories:

• The first who've played video games, saw cartoons in color
• The last to record songs of the radio on cassettes
• Knew the connection between a pencil and cassette and the pioneers of VCR, walkmans and chatrooms.
• The generation of the doordarshan, street cricket, kite flying, wwf and paper boats
• The first family car was a Fiat or an Ambassador. This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going
• Camlin geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil were our prized possession
• Jumbo Circus have held our breath while the pretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyed the elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the Mautka Gola and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hitting each others bottoms
• Knew that Indira Gandhi was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all we needed to know
• If we wanted a cycle, had only one option: BSA SLR
• Most of the house had the 'almirah' made by the famous Godrej company. Mothers would lock up their jewelery in here and this also provided for the only full length mirror in the house
• Giant Robot, the cartoon that aired on Doordarshan ever Sunday, Prannoy Roy who gave us the news through "the world this week"
• Random ads that used to be on tv and the song went like this "Vicco Turmeric, Vicco cosmetic, Vicco turmeric ayurvedic cream " and "Washing powder Nirma, Washing powder Nirma Doodh si safedi, Nirma se aayi". The first washing machine ad went like this "It rinses, it washes, it even dries your clothes - Videocon washig machine!"
• A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation, setting and posing for each picture. Therefore, we have atleast one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention
• Adjusting very long pole with a funny antenna on roof top for cricket matches
• At school some of us used to participate in elocution competitions, typically memorizes a poem/chapter from an English author they have no connection with and gets up in front of everyone to recite random poem/chapter verbatim.

Sometimes these memories make me think that People were very happy and satisfied with small small things then!

To add, Doordarshan our only channel then used to start with the following signature, which would make the later generations go to sleep if listens today.

and "Hamara Bajaj" ad