The 70's kid

For those who grew up during the 70s and well early eighties in middleclass India.

1.. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 5-8 years, you were very proud of your first "Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi"

2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true heroes. You can also nodyour heads to names like Chandamama, Champak, Lot-Pot, Nandan. Thebrainy ones read "Competition Success Review".

3. You took pride in turning to the back page of your latest AmarChitra Katha and ticking off yet another title. How many ever youticked, you still had many to go

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4. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Flora pencil was your prized possession.

5. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' oryour cousins' houses.

6. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla softy in acone or at most - a Choco Bar if you lived in a swanky town.

7. Your first family car ( and the only one) was a Fiat. Or an ambassador.This often had to be pushed by the entire family to get going.

8. The glass windows in the back seats used to get stuck at thetwo-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The windowwent down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handleto pull it down.Locking the door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky,non-rotary handle downwards.

9. Your mom had stitched the weirdest lace curtains for all thewindows of the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad wasthe comfort-oriented kind, you had a magnificent small fan upfront,below which screwed to the board was the cassette player.

10.. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yoursafter 8th or the 10th standard exams.

11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus" ; have held your breath while thepretty young thing in the glittery skirt did acrobatics, quite enjoyedthe elephants hitting football, the motorcyclist vrooming in the"Mautka Gola"and it was politically okay to laugh your guts out at dwarfs hittingeach others bottoms!

12. You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood togather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If youdidn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It matteredlittle if you knew the owners or not.

14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bior even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with twoside clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!

15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket wasplayed in whites.

16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own ( thefamily's; not your own own!) colour TV when the Asian Games started.Everyone else got the same idea as well and ever since, no one cameover to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's.

17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of themourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much "ShashtriyaSangeet" can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during themourning.

18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful andterribly important. And that's all you needed to know.

19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and the Mixie..

20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers andsometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers...

21. Movies meant Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie youalways had to watch the obligatory
"newsreel".

22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all thesongs of Abba and BoneyM23. You had a turntable "stereo" and a collection of LP Records..

23Your hormones went crazy when you bought "Disco Deewane" by Naziya Hassan &Zoheb Hassan.

24. You couldn't contain your happiness when you suddenly hadknowledge of Grammy awards and Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper & OMG evenMichael Jackson became familiar names.25.. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whackyou and it was all okay.26..
Photograph taking was a big thing.. You were lucky if your
familyowned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justifiedthe half hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture.Therefore, you have at least one family picture where everyone isholding their breath and standing at attention!

ADD ONS
We also grew up on Enid Blaytons, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Rajan Iqbal ( Hindi), of course Phantoms, Mandrake. Tin Tin ,Astrix and then in Eighth to tenth class most of us had finished all Alister McLean, Sydney Sheldon, Louis L'Amour, Sudden Series, J archer, in NDA finished all JamesHardley Chase, Robert Ludlums, Herman Wouk, Mario Puzo, etc......... .Later wewere introduced to many new ones but coming back to 70 /80sthose books even classic like Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were my child hood buddies..... ......


Also travelling in Bus local or cycling to school in middle of city street when i was in eighth std was more fun .

First class coupe with family was .luxury,...those first class coupe was last i travelled in 1998 from Pune to Secuderabad when shifting for degree course..

Binaca Geet Mala was most awaited and of course Wed chitrahhar and Sunday Movie on our black and white TV

This is an email doing the rounds. Dont know who originally wrote it, but great to share.