The 90s Blog

When I was around 8 years old, my mother and I went to the famous Ranganathan street in T. Nagar for Diwali shopping. Chennai residents will know how crowded this street usually is and festival times are even worse. However, what brings so many to this street is the wide range of shops it has, where one could buy everything including electronics, kitchen vessels, toys, flowers and clothes. When we reached the street, my mother told me to hold her hand tight or I would get lost in the crowd. I held her hand firmly and we walked into the street, and made our way to one shop after another, getting the items on our list. Generally, my mother would plan our outings in the non-peak time of the day, which was usually between 11 am-3 pm, when the crowd would be minimal. On this particular day, we were delayed, and it was past 5 pm when we got out of our final shop. As soon as we exited the shop, the massive sea of people flowing into the street pushed me away from my mother, who also d

If you have been reading my other posts and feeling jealous that I went to an awesome school, you are going to get further jealous! In addition to all the fun extracurricular activities, our school also had elections! Yes, you read that right! We had elections every year to select the School pupil leader or the SPL, assistant SPL (ASPL), the treasurer and the cultural secretary (this was a coveted position that most contestants were after). The ASPL would step in if the SPL was absent or if there were many tasks to do. I think the treasurer managed the funds of the student union. Usually, it was a commerce student that was selected for this post. The cultural secretary, people thought had a fun job, as he/ she was in-charge of the interschool ‘culturals’, where we would go to other schools and vice-versa to participate in various, fiercely battled competitions. But the reality was that the cultural secretary was often running around trying to get everything done while being in the

Unique to our school, we had an event called the ‘Project week’. This event was for primary school one year and middle school the next, so depending on which class one was in, we would get to participate in the project every alternate year. During this week, each subject (department) would be allotted a classroom in the ground floor. So, there would be classrooms marked: Mathematics, English, Science, Hindi, Social studies, Tamil and so on. Every year, we would have a theme. I remember once it was ‘Malice against none’. Every student could pick one or more subjects to participate in, collaborate with other students and discuss ideas with the respective teachers and then, adhering to the theme given for the year, had to make different ways of using the subject and display the concepts to the public. This was a public event, where the entire school would be open to parents, grandparents, siblings, students of other nearby schools and other interested people from Korattur

A new year has just begun with a lot of joy, hope and fervor. We have all had weeks of celebrating one festival after another in the last two months. This season was and is my favorite time of the year. Even in school, this was the best season of the year. Our school celebrated all the festivals in a grand way. For Dusshera, we would have a massive ‘Golu’: multiple steps decked with hundreds of dolls brought in by teachers and students. Teachers would even take turns and perform the puja everyday and even make the tasty ‘Sundal’ and distribute to all the students. We would be taken for a class-wise tour of the Golu, a great way to bunk one period of study! They would also have fancy dress competition with a Dusshera theme for the nursery kids, who would come in costumes of all possible gods or characters from our mythology. After Dusshera would come Deepavali/Diwali, the festival of lights. Diwali would be a school holiday, where we would celebrate with family and friends a

I have strong memories of two specific events that took place in my school. I think ours and PSBB school were the only schools who had these events, and both were unique in their own way. The first one was called general assembly or G.A. and it was basically the first two periods of a working day (split into Monday for primary school (1 st to 5 th standard), Wednesday for middle school (6 th to 8 th standard) and Friday for High school (9 th to 12 th standard)). Every week (apart from the exam season), we would have different competitions like oratorical, debates, mock-news, just-a-minute (JAM), ad-zap, singing, dancing, vedas/shloka recital, fancy-dress etc. Children would be encouraged to participate as per their talent or interest. After the usual morning prayer assembly, the “G.A. classes” would stay back and move to the school portico, where the stage would be set with mike (and props when required). Someone among the students would be pre-picked to compere the e

Malanjhkhand was a small town in Madhya Pradesh (MP), central India, where my maternal grandparents lived for several years. My grandfather, tatagaru , as we called him worked at the town’s only hospital as a lab technician. I think most of the town comprised of employees of a mining initiative called the Hindustan copper project. I am not even sure if the HCP still exists, but I know that Malanjhkhand still does. So, every summer vacation of my early childhood, my mother would take me and my younger sister to Malanjhkhand and we would spend 1.5-2 months there. Back in the 90s, summer vacations were that long! The vacation would kick-start with a long train journey, mostly on the Tamil Nadu express, from Madras (now Chennai) to Nagpur. At Nagpur, my tatagaru would eagerly wait for us at the station. Before proceeding to the bus station to catch a bus to our next destination, Balaghat, we would first eat at what I called ‘the hut hotel’. To this day, none of us remember the a

Back in the day, we had a lot of time to spend time with our friends. These friends were aplenty and belonged to different categories: school friends (classmates), ‘bus/ train friends’ (you met them during commute to school and they could be senior or junior in age), ‘colony friends’ (these lived in the same colony as you but went to different schools), ‘tuition friends’ (may be from same or different colonies but came to the same tuition), ‘street friends’ (even ‘back-street’ or ‘side-street’ friends!) who were a subgroup in the colony friends but since they lived very close you your house, you were allowed to go to their homes and play. We even had ‘vacation friends’ (those who lived in other cities/countries and came to visit their grandparents or uncle-aunt during vacations). Depending on who it was and where you met them, there were several game options to choose from and have nonstop fun: Board and card games Usually, our immediate neighbor’s kids (part of street friend

Local trains in India are part of every city dweller’s life. Even to this day, millions use the local trains to get to their schools, colleges or work places. Trains were as crowded as they are now even in the 90s, so I guess that part has not changed that much! From 6 th standard onwards, we had to take the local train to go to school as the school bus was only for primary and nursery kids. The station was usually around 15 min by walk and so I would cycle there instead, which would take me less than 5 min. On my way to the station, I would stop at my friend S’s house, wait for her to come out with her cycle. Then, we would both cycle to our other friend G’s house, which was located right next to the station. S and I preferred to leave our cycles at G’s house instead of the usual cycle-stand at the station for two reasons. One was the safety aspect and the other was the ease of getting the cycle out. At the cycle stand, it would take us forever to find a free spot to put the

In life, I have been blessed with exceptional friends who are each unique in their own way. When I look back in time, I realize that I made my first best friend for life way back in school. J and I were in the same class since primary school, but really hit it off when we were in the same section from class six. J was and still is full of life! We used to chat nonstop, be in inside or outside the class, especially in the Hindi class, as our spoken Hindi was good thanks to the influence of our respective mothers (J is Bengali, and my mom grew up in the north). Outside of school, I would regularly visit her home in Korattur, where her mother used to make my favorite egg curry and vegetable fried rice for lunch 😊 We would eat, listen to songs (remember cassette players?), walk around Korattur and even visit J’s tailor sometimes. J would fill me in about the latest trends in fashion, serials, movies and gossip! I used to (still do) admire J’s confidence and friendliness with pe

Our school-bus trips everyday were no less eventful than a day at the school. The last seat of the bus was a long seat, and usually the 5 th standard kids (“seniors”) sat there. Us minions in 2 nd or 3 rd standard would sit in the middle or rear end of the bus, on either side, but would never be allowed to sit in the last row. Specifically, we would fight for the seat that was right above the back-tire as it would have an extra bounce every time the bus went over a speed-breaker or into a pothole. The LKG and UKG kids would usually be seated in the front rows so the conductor (I think his name was Kumar), a sweet chap, could comfort them as some of them would cry as soon as they were put in the bus and had to say bye to their parents. Kumar anna would also patiently clean up kids’ vomit, as some of them would have motion sickness. I remember, as soon as a kid puked, the driver would stop the bus. Kumar would take the kid out, and wash him, his uniform etc. and then find some