70s and 80s in India....

ash147

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This one is one of the best mail we get to read in the recent time.. Even though the writer is unknown, kudos to his patience for penning down these old memories..u or me may be born in the late 70's or early 80's, but these memories still hold good ..
Seventy's Middle Class India - Elderly will remember olden days & Youngsters will Laugh
For those who grew up during the 70s in middle class India, here are some things that you can identify with atleast I do!
Some never had a thing and went house to house to
enjoy them.
1. Though you may not publicly own to this, at the age of 12-17 years,you were very proud of your first "Bellbottom" or your first "Maxi"or your first Apache jeans.
2. Phantom & Mandrake were your only true
heroes. The brainy ones read"Competition Success Review".
3. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil was your prized possession.
4. The only "Holidays" you took were to go to your grandparents' or your cousins' houses.
5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick ora Choco Bar if you were better off than most.
6. You gave your neighbours phone number to others with a c/o written against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still waiting for your number to come.
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 the two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The window went down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to 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 the windows of the car. They were tied in the middle and if your dad was the comfort-oriented kinds, you had a magnificent small fan upfront.
10. Your parents were proud owners of HMT watches. You "earned" yours after SSC exams.
11. You have been to "Jumbo Circus"; have held your 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!
12. You have atleast once heard "Hawa Mahal" on the radio.
13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.
14. Sometimes the owners of these TVs got very creative and got a bi or even a tri-coloured anti-glare screen which they attached with two
side clips onto their Weston TVs. That confused the hell out of you!
15. Black & White TVs weren't so bad after all because cricket was played in whites.
16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own (the family'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 came over to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's.
17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much "Shashtriya Sangeet" can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.
18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.
19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a mixer.
20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.
21. Movies meant Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachchan. Before the start of the movie you always had to watch the obligatory "Newsreel".
22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.
23. Your hormones went crazy when you heard "Disco Deewane" by Naziya Hassan & Zoheb Hassan.
24. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.
25. Photograph taking was a big thing. You were lucky if your family owned a camera. A reel of 36 exposures was valuable hence it justified the half hour preparation & "setting" & the "posing" for each picture. Therefore, you have atleast one family picture where everyone is holding their breath and standing at attention!
And we were really happy then....see what the new technology has brought you to...no peace of mind, only pressure and stress
 
And what about the music, some of the best music came out in this period. and who can forget the worldcup 1983(a classic "where were you when" moment)
 
Hey Nice thread Ash147.I just love the 70's & Eighties.Those days will never come back! I remember our Crown B/W TV & Murphy Radio & later the National Panasonic 2 in 1, we still have it.
 
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To add Doordarshan our only channel then used to start at 5:30 in the evening with the following signature, which would make most of us go to sleep if listen today ....


Sleep?!! No way I love these tunes!!! Thanks for posting them again! :)

Sent from my iPod touch
 
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I still remember the TV shows which I used to watch in Doordarshan like Yeh jo hai Zindagi, Nukkad, Humlog, Bharath ek khog, Apradhi Kaun, Karamchand, Tamas, Malgudi days etc. etc. the standard of the shows were very good and good thing was everyone will watch the same shows good eg. of unity in diversity.
 
Hi

Dont forget the bike JAWA with its twin exhaust, inimitable sound and the speed. As the saying goes they dont make them like that anymore.

Regards

Sub
 
Good one ash, brought back memories:).

Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.
For the record, she never smiled till her last day as News Reader. The other News Reader was Gitanjali Iyer and Pankaj Kapoor if I remember right.

3. Your "Camlin" geometry box & Natraj/Flora pencil was your prized possession.
5. Ice-cream meant only - either an orange stick, a vanilla stick ora Choco Bar if you were better off than most.
6. You gave your neighbours phone number to others with a c/o written against it because you had booked yours only 7 years ago and were still waiting for your number to come.
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 the two-thirds down level and used to irk the shit out of you! The window went down only if your puny arm could manage the tacky rotary handle to pull it down. Locking the door was easy. You just whacked the other tacky, non-rotary handle downwards.
13. If you had a TV, it was normal to expect the neighborhood to gather around to watch the Chitrahaar or the Sunday movie. If you didn't have a TV, you just went to a house that did. It mattered little if you knew the owners or not.
16. You thought your Dad rocked because you got your own (the family'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 came over to your house and you didn't go to anyone else's.
17. You dreaded the death of any political leader because of the mourning they would announce on the TV. After all how much "Shashtriya Sangeet" can a kid take? Salma Sultana also didn't smile during the mourning.
18. You knew that "Indira Gandhi" was somebody really powerful and terribly important. And that's all you needed to know.
19. The only "Gadgets" in the house were the TV, the Fridge and possibly a mixer.
20. All the gadgets had to be duly covered with a crochet covers and sometimes even with ingenious, custom-fit plastic covers.
22. You thought you were so rocking because you knew almost all the songs of Abba and Boney M.
24. School teachers, your parents and even your neighbours could whack you and it was all okay.
True, very well documented:).
 
And Binaka (lateron Cibaka) Geetmala. The year end rating in Geetmala was final verdict of popularity of the songs in a particular year. Mesmerizing way of presenting by living encyclopaedia of Hindi film music Amin Sayani could not be forgot.
 
Nice thread!

Add to the mix TV serials like Ramayan & Mahabaratha, the hi tech stuff like Giant Robot & Star Trek, and cartoons like Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry, He-man! Sundays in my childhood were pure bliss at least till they start the feature movie;)

Also, back in my days, for watching non-feature movies, one had to rent a VCR and the cassettes!

Hmm, good old days:)
 
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