Did you grow up in the nineties? The nineties was a good time to have lived in. Internet had just been invented, but of course we didn’t have email accounts then. Orkut and Facebook were nowhere near being born. One had limited access to television. A romantic movie meant Shahrukh Khan. Sundays mornings began with Rangoli. We remembered our friends’ phone numbers verbatim.
What is your fondest memory of the nineties? Here is a collection of the best things about the nineties. Do you have anything to add to this?
1. Rangoli / Chitrahaar - All hell would break lose if you got up late and missed Rangoli.
2. Falguni Pathak - The tomboy singer who sang overtly feminine songs.
Falguni Pathak-Maine payal hai chankai by dm_5194a8bc5ee99
3. Shaktiman - And don’t we remember his love interest, Gita Vishwas, as well?
4. Washing Powder Nirma. Nirma! - Probably the Amul girl of the nineties.
5. Sachin Tendulkar – Dravid – Ganguly - The holy trinity of Indian cricket when it was very much the gentleman’s game.
6. Mowgli
7. Malgudi Days - ta ta tanana …
8. Chandrakanta - Who can forget the inimitable Kroor Singh with his spiked hair. Yakku!
9. Alif Laila
10. Hum Paanch - Remember the dumb curly-haired Sweety and Kajal bhai?
11. Dave - Back then it was the only computer game we could play on the computer.
12. Byomkesh Bakshi - The dhoti-clad Bengali detective came into our lives much before Benedict Cumberbatch did.
13.Antakhshri - The favourite-most activity on picnics, when the power went off, when relatives came visiting.
14. Orange packing covers for books
Remember sitting with all your books and packing paper just before the start of a new session at school?
15. Audio cassettes and Floppy Discs
16. Roohhafza - No aerated drink could match this rose-scented elixir.
17. Disney – Donald Duck
There was no Cartoon Network and one had to wait for 6 in the evening to view their favourite cartoon.
18. Big Babool - If you didn’t compete with your friends over who blew the biggest bubble, you had a sad childhood.
19. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara
The iconic song in which the who’s who of the Indian arts industry featured. Either you felt a lump in the throat or you closely watched the video to see how young Mithun Charavarty looked.
20. Made in India
Either it was Alisha’s desirable female voice or a bare-chested Milind Soman appearing from a cardboard box that made the video so cool. An entire nation of girls went mad and [for a change] Indian men seemed irresistible.
21. Fiat and Maruti 800
Back then, these were the only two cars seen on Indian roads. Everybody owned either a Fiat or a Maruti, or a ‘Humara Bajaj’ scooter.
22. Fountain Pen - For days we ate with ink-stained hands, but never let our parents fill the ink pen for us.
23. Vicco Vajradanti - Like Emami, Boroline, Dabur products and MDH masale, some brands were so integral to our lives they come to represent the era.
24. Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha - You waited a whole month for the next issue, and finished reading the whole thing in flat 15 minutes as soon as it arrived.
25. Action ka School Time Shoes - The refrain “Good…good morning teacher” stuck in your head and you found yourself greeting your teacher in the same fashion.
Nishi Jain spent some precious years of her life studying English literature, editing novels, and writing newspaper articles. Then one day, as she was sitting under a tree with no branches, a rotten pancake fell on her head from the window above and she had her Newtonian moment. From then on, all she does is eat pancakes, write, and profess fake love to pastry chefs.
Nishi Jain – who has written 19 posts on WAH Blog.
