Trying to remember…

– how many letters did we write in a day, a month, a year before we found email?
– what was lingua franca for youngsters before SMSese?
– how did people manage to make franship before social networking became all the rage?
– when did we ever say ‘I wish I had 24-hour news channels’?
– where did we go on weekend evenings before malls took over our cityscapes?
– what did people do to pass time before they learnt to play games or browse idly through their mobile phones while waiting for appointments?
– what did we do on February 14th? and what did the protesters protest? and how did Archies and Hallmark sell their tacky things?
– where did we go to talk about ourselves and our lives before we started writing blogs?
– how did we manage to stay off the news of the world while on holiday? and stay away also from broadcasting news of ourselves and our holiday?
– what was travel like when everyone and his brother did not have a digital camera?
– how did we stay patient through the lines at banks, railway stations and other places where we now transact over the internet?
– what kind of choice did the corner store grocer give us in pasta sauce? why was it still fun waiting for the tiny bundle of toffees he sent free every month with the groceries?
– how did music survive, thrive, flourish without music videos? (and how does it now, despite music videos, of course – but that is beyond the scope of this rambling post)…

Trying to remember….

4 comments

  1. Nice ones charukesi! So many times I sit down and wonder myself!
    Alas, none from the gen-next will fathom what we are trying to remember – just as we could not fathom when my parents remembered the days when they waited for summer holidays to rush to their uncle’s place, for him to take them riding in a horse-buggy on girgaum chowpatty, to watch a movie for 25p , to earn a allowance of 1Re a month!
    Generations change – methods change- technology changes – we should savour our memories to ourselves without expecting the gen-next to understand:-)

  2. Nice to indulge in a bit of nostalgia for those born before 1981 🙂 The thing is, that was then and this is now. A little pointless to compare how we did things in a less wired time, to how we do them now. What is interesting is that old adage about things staying the same. Technology does not necessarily change behaviour. Perhaps it adds a different perception of time. I tend to believe that our instincts and responses remain frighteningly unchanged. What is interesting about your reverie is that it reminds me that I would like to see more historical research/fiction/writing/non fiction about the recent past. I’d love to read something about you taking one of those experiences in your list and writing more about it … Thanks Charukesi, I rarely comment on blogs and this brief post made me want to.

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