Days of "Then"

A funny face is entertainment enough for us as little babies. Adults sticking their tounges out, rolling their eyes,making funny noises and hiding their faces in their palms,or simply grinning and swaying their heads from one side to the other trying to elicit a response from the solitary infant they have for an audience.

Babies often laugh their tiny guts out at such gesticulations, some ofcourse have to signal for attention to satiate one thing or the other on their small list of demands.

Bright lights, soap bubbles, striking colors, crying dolls and bed time stories with seriously flawed logic were enough to keep almost all of us happy till a certain age.

We loved to color-crayons,color pencils,water colors were our prized possessions!We enjoyed running around for no apparent reason and believed every 'scary' tale we heard.

Life was all about merry making, in school and at home.

Television was not the most popular thing around, fast food was unheard of and the concept of pocket money did not exist.Not every house had a telephone and ink pens ruled our lives.

We girls loved our dolls and barbies (more than just dolls to us),and them boys were crazy about their GI Joes and Hotwheels.There was no 'Soft Toy' fascination.

Orange juice was fun and serving Roohavsa and Rasna was a trend at every birthday party.We loved the concept of birthdays-selecting gifts and gift wrapping them for friends-and ripping them apart and experiencing the joy of knowing what was gifted to us-story books and pencil boxes used to be my favourite!

Outdoors was all about hide and seek, lock and key, pass pass,hopping catching,cat and mouse, water and land, and other games with no names!

Indoors,we hosted doll parties and weddings where we exchanged gifts and spent days making them dresses,jewelry,quilts,pillows from whatever cloth left overs and stray beads we could get our hands on.

My dolls i remember, had funny names- Indu (lead actress),Bindu (evil cousin),Julie (the friend),Genny (the hero), Ranka(the curly haired villian), Kanchini and Sadhuni (sidekicks) and Kumbi (well, the squeaky one)!!

Us kids had to wait for special occasions to be bought a dress and that made us cherish it all the more;as for brands,we were clueless!'Fashion' to us was a frilly frock, a big hairclip, colorful suspenders and knee lenght socks.I remember parading in my new outfits with a sense of pride,showing off to one and all!

We wrote letters to keep in touch.Scented pens were once the only fad that we knew of! Birthday cards were a 'must give'.

Jigzaw puzzles, Brainvita,Scrabble, Doctor Set, Ludo and Carrom were common games we spent hours playing.

As we grew older,there was more of television, less of paper, more of the couch and less of outdoors, burgers and pizzas, coke and pepsi, videogames, the world wide web and mobile phones.

And now of course, what my generation of kids knew and loved , is obsolete,boring and stale.The evolution is interseing and as time goes by,I can only wonder what next? 

The days of 'then' were unique and something that belonged to us kids-born in the eighties-I sure am happy to be one!