Remembering the 80's...

It wasnt a decade of magic. And it certainly wasnt a period when people could forsee the huge technological revolution or the economic liberalisation that would forever change the face of thhe globe and more than any place else, of India. India was the sleeping giant, its population fast approaching a billion, its largest employer, the government scratched its head, alarmed over finding jobs for millions of young people coming out of its colleges. Let me leave the country at large, what was the eighties to me as a kid? I was just opening my eyes, the world around presented me with more questions than answers...and in writing this post I decided to rewind back in time and bring back memories and perspectives of my nascent years...and most of all try to write this post as me as an 8 or 10-year old would. Of course, I am today armed with the benefit of hindsight which undeniably would forever corrupt my post's content and quality.

The Early Years
The bus was the official vehicle of our family unit. Our Amby doubled as a tourist taxi and I forever remember it to be running from one problem to another, one workshop to another...and I really hated the beast. Pops took the university bus to Karyavattom, mom the KSRTC bus to Ayurveda College and then a long walk to Vanchiyoor(poor thing...after all that, she had to contend with two devils in the evening...but how where we to know!) and we kids took the school bus. We lived at Vrindavan Gardens, at Pattom, a huge housing colong of almost 1000 apartments, lots of space to play and a huge jungle for a backyard(it was our fave haunt!) and many many bubbly kids, our own age. These days when I pass by there, the place looks almost dead, devoid of the kids who made that place a wonderland, I guess they are all watching the telly or sticking to their books. For me Vrindavan was paradise, I yearned for the time("or whatever it was, I would wonder, that made school get over") to fly and get home to an evening of soccer, cricket, eripanthu, hide & seek, police and robber, seven-tiles and after Fauji, we were javans and guerillas mowing each other down with guns, catapults, ruubber bands & paper-bullets inside our jungle.

Prime-Time!!!
If I wrote abt telly 10 years back, I would have called Doordarshan, the biggest practical joke, the govt played on us people. But then those were the days of evolution...that is, I wonder if Cable TV hadnt come, the process of evolution has remained stagnant even in 2005 with only marginal improvement in the programmes they telecast. Unlike these days, we never were left satisfied with the measly programmes telecast and to add to our misery, the death of some lame politician would be celebraed with days of mourning and mournful ragas tested our paience no end!! But then who could forget, The World This Week which earned for Prannoy Roy the position he holds today or Siddhartha Basu's quiz, or the classic malayalam comedy serial, Panchapaandavar or Ramayana, Mahanbharata, Fauji, Circus and Mungerilal which stands fresh in national memory even today.

Where Was The Money, Yaar!!!
Today the ATM machines spit at me wads of 500's and 1000 rupee notes which are over sooner than I can make the next trek to the counter. Back then, for Rs.10...given after a few weeks of begging ...I would eat a plate of barrota and beef-curry for 7.5, an incecream soda for Rs.2 and a sipup for 50ps. And well, what was money worth, a few beating, I suppose...sent out to do some shopping with my sis for company I lost a Rs.5 note on the way back and after the thrashings was told to come back only with the money...and as we tearily combed the road a good uncle who chanced on it some way ahead handed it over to us! I realized things hadnt changed much in the 80's from the 50's when my grandmom recounted a similar story of how she caned my dad along the road for loosing Re.1 she had given him to buy a hero pen, only for him to be saved by a man walking by who had found it on the way. And the 80's were the heydays of the Gulf Mallu. These men and women, strutting abt in goldwatches, sunglasses and cars laden with electronic goods earned the envy and admiration of all...scarcely a family then, and even today to some extent, didnt have somebody in the Gulf.

School...
I hated junior school. I had few friends, hated my lessons, I had no head for Maths, and I cried for days on end about it. Whatever I studied seemed not to go to my head, as the exams proved, but later life disproved, and the progress card, I discovered, was the worst peice of torture modern civilization has inflicted on many a carefree child. Of school, I remember this act of charity on my part...a senior who helped me cross the road and was from the same bus-stop would talk about Michaeal Jackson all the time, and discovering a huge, black leather belt wih silver studs and a pic of MJ embossed on metal, which someone had carelessly gifted had lain disused for a lot of years and with my moms permission gifted it to him(those were the days seniors were like gods and we proud to be of any service to them!). I still remember the next day he came strutting towards me, his hair all wet, a few strands pulled forward like MJ, his shirt tucked in flouting school rules, and the belt and MJ gleaming in the sun...Oh! What a fall,MJ!!!

Clothes...
I hated the tailor-stiched clothes of the 80's, but then I was to blame for all lack of finesse...the first jeans, I got was discarded, coz I wondered how people could wear something so stiff and heavy and my mom telling me, "Eda, ithe jeans aada"! and me replying..."Enthonne Jeans"! Sometime last year, my sis remarked how she felt, after looking at college fotos of the chechis at the flats, that the mallu college gals of the 80's were more trendy, style-conscious and wore jeans, skirts and sylish salwars unlike the ones of the '90s and all I could think was...Ayyo! What a big loss!!!

Attitudes...
The first time I took up a newspaper was at the height of the Bofors scandal and I also remember a pic of computers destroyed in tvm...years later I conneced the fotos with the agitation launced by SFI to protest loss of jobs due to computerization. How stupid those guys must be feeling today. The computer remained an object of puzzlement thru the 80's to the mid 90's and sometime when I was in the 4th I remember an elder pal, Rahul inviting me to go learn BASIC with him for fun...6 years later I learnt it out of compulsion only to find the world had moved way past BASIC and was at the verge of the IT revolution.

Sports Afficianados...
Trivandrum was a hotbed of sporting activities thru the 80's and early 90's The televised-cricket fever hadnt struck and thanks to my cousin, Ajichetan I got to see some great basketball and football matches where it seemed the entire college crowd of TVM had descended...and of them(mostly SFI guys!) howling and shouting down Mr.K who did prize distribuion with a "kallan karunakara" yelp and me too joining in it with delight only to be dismayed at the cool dude turning to our section, folding his hands and giving that trademark valicha chiri only to make us shout louder. Of cricket, my first memories are of dilip vengsarkar taking on the fearsome west indies quartet only to see his hand broken by marshall after scoring a century, but I wondered why these men didnt score more often like us kids who flashed at every ball...yeah, I still didnt understand Test Cricket!!! But a moment in late 1989, swayed my attention to cricket for almost 10 years later, when a 16-year old rookie swamped veteran Abdul Qadir, playing in his last match, for 27 runs in an over...

The Big Gap...
Those days, my native places, Kattanam and Arakulam, seemed to me like places on the verge of civilization. The gap between cities like tvm,cochin and villages were huge. Everytime we visited the nadu, we got lost, or the car got stuck in the mud or wouldnt climb up a steep slope bcoz it lost momentum and the roads were untarred and at many places rocks protruded from the road. If lost, my sis and I would shrink in our backseats, scared of the darkness around us, frustrated at the absence of streetlights, irritating crickets, howling dogs and not a person in sight to ask for directions and I'd think of my parents, "Gosh these people cant even take me to their homes of so many years without geting us lost"...I missed the whole point...of the romaniticism of these places and how it moulded my parents...for me it was a conspiracy to distance me from friends at the flats. Today when I think abt the lost native places...it is and isnt a big loss...the natural ambience persists but today the gap between cities and villages in kerala have narrowed...everywhere you see mobile towers, cable TV and internet.

And Then...
The 90's arrived. The Maruti came into our home for the first of many later ones. It signalled the upwardly mobile aspirations of my parents. And they never looked back. The frugality of the 80's was over. A decade of saving, career-building and investment paid fruit. We moved out of the flats, my dad started lecturing internationally, my mom became a busy lawyer, I was out of junior school, the Rao-Manmohan Reforms came and from feathery strides, India started to gallop to catch up with the developed world. Well what was the '80's to you and me...trace your way back to your parents booking trunk calls and waiting anywhere from 30 mins to 24 hrs for the call to go through...and memories will come flooding back!!!!

Enter The Last Lap...

The last two hours were amazing...i recharged my fone after 2 weeks and the calls started coming in and going out...talked to my parents, grandmothers, sis and a host of friends all over the place...from India to the US...and they've done the trick again...got me into a state of mind where I felt like blogging. Its the first time in life that I've no friends at arms length to confide in, joke with and fool around... but the moment these people call, I am so cheered up as though they just left my side. My sis had spent the day with my usc pals, sujith and his wife simi and they bullied me to jealousy with how as of old they had downloaded and watched 3 malayalam movies at a stretch and of how i was missing out on all the new malayalam and english movie releases which never ever happened in 4 years in LA, thomman called from some jungle in kashmir and without net connection i had to convey to the poor fellow all the happenings in our batch in exchange for a round of "josh", shan's voice seemed all animated with the record cricket match at Wanderers and good old motta excitedly recounted the preparations going on for his wedding which i'm fated to miss and finally i teased my two lovely grandmas, one of whoim celeberated her 83rd birthday today, to blushes and infectious laughter which travelled with their sweet voices all the way to delhi.

Month of Disquiet...
I'd like to banish memories of february to the dustbin. I soon found out that a lot of study that i had seemingly done was washed away. I was appalled at my retention ability which was something i've always been proud of from the schooldays. I guess it must have had to do with the huge reading list day in and day out, that something new studied, cleaves away the old. I realized I had to start cramming - "to by-heart" was a phrase I hated with a fervor i reserved for pavakka thorran...and in this autumn of my academic life I had to learn to do some things anew. My motivation tapered off somewhere down the line, I began to watch movies and the india-pak matches too. A few hours into my books and without even knowing what hit me...I would be fast asleep. The model tests started and seeing my miserable scores and many ppl i had disdainfully rejected as non-starters in this effort scoring high, i was piqued, even humbled and i realised i had to do whatever it takes. Anyways March has begun well, I shifted my apartment to a ramshackle almost mohalla-like area witha perennial water problem, far away from the madding crowd and miraculously the ennui that seemed to completely envelope me has lifted, and I am back to "merrily" cramming away.

The Company of Good Men...
A good dose of peer "pressure" or to state it better peer achievements has injected a fresh dose of ambition in me. A classmate from Loyola, Arun cracked the MD exam at St.John's Blore in his 3rd attempt, kicha has been invited to join some of the most prestigious post-grad architecture courses in the US and Europe, a close bud motta is hiring an employee at his architecture firm to take the extra workload of his back(he works in the morning at the office of a senior architect and in the evening at his place!), two other schoolpals, jinu and ichayan began their Ph.D programs in the US, three other loyolites feel settled enough to begin married life soon and two of my fellow-savages from college saw their firm Neologix on a hiring spree reaching double digits and hungry for further expansion. Brick-by-brick everyone is laying strong foundations for succesful careers and I have realized I cant afford to blink now.

The Lost Moonflower...
My uncle's novel finally comes out this year and that is the title. It is based on Christian mythology...those of you who are expecting somthing akin to Da Vinci Code, feel ready to be disappointed...he's a preist...hehe! My sis and cousins helped in the proof-reading and cover selection and though he sent me the manuscript I've still not found the time to read it, forget even critiqueing it or give him any feedback. I guess I'll finally wait for an autographed copy to start reading! The malayalam translation I believe is being done by D.C.Books. One of my greatest regrets and source of envy is that my cousins got to be moulded, taught and guided by this great man while I've never been satisfied with the measly amount of time I've got to spent with him the last 25 years. An abiding memory will be how he introduced my grandmother to his churchmembers during sunday service when we visited his church during our US trip in '98. He said, "this 5th form educated woman taught me the ABC's of the English language and my first nursery rhymes"...and I remember everyone in the church including my mom, her other brother and all of us kids with tears in our eyes and she getting a standing ovation from the laiety. Finally, coming to think of it, from a malayalam-medium primary education in a tiny hamlet in Kerala to an English novel...wow, what can certainly beat that!

The Months Ahead...
D-Day is looming 60 odd days away on May14. The exam-fever has begun to strike home and I am beginning to feel the twitch in my tummy. A lot of work remains to be done. Its a battle where I was always strained for time, further compounded by my mental wrangles...but I still think I'm in with a really good chance. I came to write about something else, but have ended up not sticking to the plot. To blog or study well, you need a clear head and crisp thinking...but with so much history, economy and civics playing truant with me...I guess I'm still doing a good job and will overcome more rounds of inevitable disillusionment just waiting around the corner. To round off, an object of infinite wonder and a comrade in this effort continues to perplex me...Pappanabhan, this master of gaffes, continues to impress me...i doubt there would be another serious upsc aspirant who has a laptop and broadband connection for perennial company and he's even begun blogging too, at this late juncture while i've fearfully abjured the laptop and the internet for its forbidden pleasures which would certainly have lead me astray but is his way of maintaining sanity and a cool head.