We were having this conversation the other day about growing up in the 80s in middle-class Bengali families and it was so comforting to discover that the children of the 80s had certain common features in their lives that locked them together in a very special bond. Darby and I set out to recall what bound us together though we were unaware of each other's existence then and two unforgettable memories came up tops.
1) Our love for 'Camlin Flora' and 'Apsara Beauty' pencils,the first all white with pink flowers spiralling up and down as you twirled one in your chubby hand; the other mysterious, dark, alluring, evocative of power with its glistening black body and its flaming red blob on the top. I do admit that their names were as cocky as they can get. For some odd reason such pencils were never bought for us. Perhaps they were more expensive than the boring red-and-black striped 'Nataraj' pencils that we got, rationed and doled out to us, even as we broke them, lost them or schemed to lose them in order that we may be given the priceless floral 'Camlin Flora' or the attitude-flaunting black 'Apsara'.
2) Our love for 'Gold Spot',...our liquid desire for all things twisted, tangerine and tangy. O what divine pleasure the mere thought of being allowed to buy one only once in a blue moon! As children we could only hope for 'Limca', the lesser of the two evils but 'Gold Spot' was a big no-no for it was supposed to be detrimental to our oral hygiene, our overall health. But, if we were really lucky, if we had not pestured our Moms to distraction, we would sometimes, on liquid gold summer afternoons, win the prized bottle of liquid gold. I can still see ourselves,my friends and I, chubby little kids, mothers' little cherubs, sipping at our drinks, gleefully aware that with each sip, our tongues would change colour. What fun then to stick them out at each other, comparing whose was the tangier. Though occasionally we pined for a bottle of 'Thums Up', that was truly off limits,...bottles of carbonated pleasure for thirsty adult souls. I remember how while playing I once pretended to be the grown up sophisticate, pouring 'Thums Up' into a tumbler and believing for a brief playful moment that it was my glass of wine.
Those were the days, my friends, of living with minor childhood deprivations, of crying into fluffy pillows for requests turned down, and of occasionally waking up to find some long forgotten wish fulfilled. We are a humbler, happier generation for we know the pleasures that a mammoth fifty rupees can buy. We are children of no lesser God and our childhood of frocks and 'check-shirts'... a place from long ago where troubles melted like lemon drops.
10 comments:
this brought back a flood of memories and a deep longing to go back to those days when really all the troubles melted like lemon drops. how i wish i were a kid again!
oh... i had forgotten how much i loved gold spot!
Hi, got here via Proteeti's blog. This took me down memory lane. It was a lovely read. Comparing tongues was so much fun. And if there was a rare wedding reception in a big hotel rather than under the standard shamiana, all us kids would follow the guy with the cold drinks tray and down impossible quantities of Campa Cola, Gold Spot and Limca!
our troubles still melt like lemon drops......only on a different rainbow :)
thank you so much girls (presuming, of course, that 'me' is a woman)for finding so much pleasure in a piece of reminiscence.
and sayrem, i would like to agree with you that our troubles still melt.
tor ei lekha ta almost lamb er moto hoe uthechhe....
@taniya: sheta bhalo na kharap? amar to undergrads e 6th paper er essays niye besh beg pete hoyechilo...kichuta lamb er jonno bote.
Hey, you missed out the Camel pastel colours; those plastic water bottles we carried to school and sucked the water from, sometimes chewing at the straw tip aimlessly; the Duckback satchels we all carried; that orange and black geometry set ....
And Parle Poppins, and those round orange sweets that also made one's tongue change colour. And Doordarshan.
Miss Rupamala gave us a Camlin Flora pencil each when she left school, remember? I kept it for ages - couldn't bear to use that last memento of hers.
Kids today might have more, but we were happier.
you are so right, cool cat. these were there too. i cannot help but observe that even if for trivial material things, we as a generation are perhaps the last to attach such a lot of emotional value to things given to us. we suffer from chronic attachment whereas i envy this generation. how lucky to feel so unattached.this broad generalization may be unfair but i refuse to accept that i am entirely wrong.
Post a Comment