You know you grew up in India in 90s when....

This is a plagiarised post picked straight from IITBombay Bakar...as nowhere did they mention abt it being subjected to horrendous copyright infringements, I promptly grabbed the opportunity to enhance the non-elegance of my blog to ever non-sustenable levels...
Do chk...makes a nice read!
1) You know the words to ‘In-pin-safety-pin’ and ‘akkad-bakkad’ by heart
2) Cricket is almost a religion for you, and you idolize at least one of Rahul Dravid/Sachin Tendulkar/Saurav Ganguly.
3) You have read at least some Chacha Chaudhary or Tinkle comic.
4) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life. And you can immediately recognize the character when you see him.
5) You have some NRI relatives.
6) You couldn’t wait for it to be December so you could have the Toblerone chocolates your NRI relatives brought you
7) You watched Cartoon Network, and then the late night movies on TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended.
8 ) You watched corny dubbed versions of Small Wonder, Silver Spoon, and I Dream of Jeanie
9) You were THRILLED when McDonald’s opened in your neighborhood (or even eight kilometers away)
10) A visit to Pizza Hut used to mean a special treat
11) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each
12) You still remember the theme song of Hum Paanch. (Hum Paanch, Pam Pam Pam Paanch!)
13) You have played hours upon hour of running and catching, chor-police, lagori, saankli, ‘Doctor, doctor, help us!’, ‘Lock and key’
14) You have seen girls play “Amina Super Sina” more times than you can remember. (And you still don’t know what it means!)
15) Dog ‘in’ the bone was your favorite co-ed game.
16) Much of your free time in school was spent playing UNO.
17) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand why your younger siblings were obsessed with Pokemon and the other Japanese trends that followed.
18) Your summer vacations were often synonymous with visiting your grandparents or cousins
19) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it.
20) Bole mere lips, I love uncle Chips!
21) You know the song ‘Made in India’ by Alisha Chinai
22) You have seen many many many episodes of ‘Antakshari’ on Zee TV and know the only thing constant in the show is Annu Kapoor.
23) Many evenings have been spent watching little kids gyrate vulgarly on Boogie Woogie on Sony.
24) You were the coolest thing in class if you had a computer in your house while it was still the 90s.
25) You learnt LOGO and BASIC in school!
26) You couldn’t wait to start 4th standard so you could start writing with PENS instead of with pencils!
27) You often used terms and phrases like ‘two-say’, ‘same to you, back to you, with no returns’, and ‘shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name.’
28) You most probably saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at the cinema at least once. You also fantasized about singing songs in mustard fields as in the movie.
29) You have seen David Dhawan and Govinda movies and laughed at them.
31) You have said ‘haw’ or ‘yuck’ when you saw people kissing in English movies. (nowadays kids are used to it!)
30) Titanic was your FIRST favourite english movie.
31) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever.
32) You remember the Gujarat earthquake very clearly and could possibly tell everyone EXACTLY what you were doing when the earthquake occurred (yes, this happened in 2001, January 26, 2001, to be exact — but this group is about the things that Indian kids that GREW UP in the 90s remember and identify with).
33) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. You just wanted more more more and more. And how can I forget Hot Wheels, for both boys and girls?
34) You thought ‘imported’ clothes were definitely way better than ‘made in India’ clothes (never mind that a lot of clothes brought from overseas by NRI relatives were actually made in India, before ‘Made in China’ started appearing on EVERY existing thing)
35) “Jungle Jungle Baat Chali Hai Pata Chala Hai! Chaddi Pehen Ke Phool Khila Hai Phool Khila Hai!” You watched “The Jungle Book” every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. and just loved mowgli, bhalu and bagheera. A few years later, you watched Disney Hour, which had cartoons like Aladdin, Gummy Bears, Tail Spin, Uncle Scrooge!
36) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word.
37) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness.
38) You have tried to convince people around you to not burst crackers on Diwali, and then gone straight back home and burst them yourself.
39) You have had endless packets of Parle Gluco G biscuits, and of Brittania Little Hearts biscuits.
40) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.
41) There were no Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma- Bata and Liberty was the way to go for your sports shoes.
42) You have probably consumed more Frooti in your lifetime than there is oil in Iraq.
43) You watched Baywatch on Star World when nobody was home even though (or because) your parents said you shouldn’t watch it.
44) You bought packets of potato chips for the specific purpose of collecting Tazos. And you had Tazos depicting everyone from Confucius to Daffy Duck to Daffy Duck dressed as Confucius.
45) For the longest time, the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini, THE Fiat, and THE Ambassador were the only cars you saw on the road, and the Contessa was cool because it was bigger.
46) You would literally jump up in excitement if you ever chanced upon an imported car (Oh my gosh, is that really a MERCEDES?)!
47) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better.
48) You used to Fuzen gum. You also chewed Big (big) Babool and/or Boom Boom Boomer chewing gum. They were bright pink and disgusting tasting, but you loved them for the temporary tattoos.
49) Talking of temporary tattoos, you sometimes had contests with your classmates about who had more tattoos on their arm, leg, knee, hand, forehead, wherever.
50) You thought Mario and Contra were the coolest things ever invented, especially if you were a boy.
51) You knew that having the latest Hero or Atlas bicycle would make you the coolest kid on the block.
52) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection.
53) You have, at some point of time, worn GAP clothes (real or fake) like SRK in KKHH.
54) Seemingly senseless acronyms like SRK, DDLJ, DTPH, KKHH actually make sense to you..
55) You have at some point debated who was more beautiful- Aishwarya or Sushmita.
56) Baskin Robbins ice-cream was THE thing to have!
57) You know what Campa Cola is. And you also knew that Coca Cola was THE drink.
58) You would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and loved Bret Hart “Hitman”! really thought Undertaker had seven lives and he made an “actual” appearance in the Akshay Kumar- starrer Khiladiyon ka Khiladi.
59) When all backpacks (or ’schoolbags’) and water bottles and tiffin boxes had strange cartoon characters that were hybrid versions of seven or eight different characters, and you still bought them, because a green man wih a water pistol, boots, a jet-pack, Johnny bravo hair, a rajasthani mustache, gloves, and underwear (long johns) over his pants, called ‘Mr. X’ was OBVIOUSLY a status symbol.
60) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle.
61) You remember the Nirma girl.
62) You remember the ‘doodh doodh piyo glass full doodh’ ad and also the ‘laal kaala peela, gulabi hara neela classic hai badia bristles wala’ and ‘roz khao ande’ ads.
63) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Babysitters Club, Animorphs, Goosebumps, Sweet Valley series, Judy Blumes, and Tintin, or Archie comics. Because naturally, reading foreign authors made you much cooler than reading Tinkle.
64) Towards the late 90s (1998-99) at least some of us started our Harry Potter obsessions!
65) You absolutely HAD to go to Essel World if you were with cousins! “Essel World mein rahoonga main, ghar nahin nahin jaaonga main!” (I never went but always dreamed of going there!)
66) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously. The smarter ones amongst you actually took part in it and had your entire school and your entire extended families watch you on it!
67) Maggi 2 Minute Noodles = ultimate snack (and tiffin, lunch, dinner)!
68) If you grew up in the early 90s, you recall the nation’s obsession with Mahabharata on TV
69) If u keenly watched Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot on DD2 (there was a DD2 then)
70) And eagerly waited for the Saturdays to watch Rex Smith, the man n his machine on Street Hawk (that intro music was awesome)
71) If Byomkesh Bakshi was ur favourite detective serial n u waited with baited breath for Thursday 8PM (It was the first serial 2 cross the 30 min slot, it had a 45 min run)
72) And inspite of that u couldnt miss Tehkikaat, Tiger or KaramChand
73) Your parents always reminded you that Buniyaad still was the all-time best serial n directed by the Sholay director Ramesh Sippy
74) Kavita Choudhury was ur woman of substance and Udaan the best women-oriented show
75) Dekh Bhai Dekh and Movers n Shakers formed an integral part of your weekly routine
76) Playing Prince of Persia in those old DOS-mode-days seemed 2 be the most thrilling experience.
77) In the later 90s, you religiously followed Hip Hip Hooray on Zee. Maybe Just Mohabbat on Sony too
78) You eagerly awaited Friendship Day, so you could give friendship bands to all your friends, and get bands from them in return. Then, of course, those with the most bands loved to show them off .
79) Backstreet Boys’ “Quit Playing Games” was one of the first English songs that you LOVE!
80) This list made you smile.


It did indeed make me smile...I happened to score a 72 outta 80...
I SOO GREW UP IN INDIA IN THE 1990'S!!!

The Sudden Beauty

Amidst the hazy, glowing sheen,
You shall see what's always been,
The misty blue, the apple red,
The playful qualm of brownish dead.

How you saw not meadow hays,
snaking rivers, pebbly bays,
Never ago, did you wonder,
The blackish bandidas of hunger.

'You assent tears behind,
Are they what had been your kind?

They see not a heaving heart,
nor creases on your last-worn shirt,
They beckon no departeds,
hunting reasons those never existed.

The walls shall be repainted,
Vanish away will all tainted,
All that you did never pen,
Unheard they shall ever remain.


You shall miss not candid play,
Was such vital going away?

Walking the line with Guiltless Grewal

   

As The Higher Engineering Mathematics by B.S. Grewal(wow!!I am astounded at the fact that I have managed to learn by heart atleast the name of the book in almost three semesters, if not its contents :P) lies open on my lap without me glancing at it  even once in the past one and a half hour, as the film, ''Walk The Line" goes on in the background of this blogger update page, with the legendary Ring of Fire playing on in yet another background citing the orange-white striped road blockage sign, I am really getting into the feel of my yet another shapeless, spineless attempt at giving words to the colossal fervor of chemical stringing and unbinding going on inside the negligible amount of grey cells that I actually use.
Phew!!My English teacher would have "face-massacred" me right now if she would have spotted the number of words in the sentence above. She always put a word limit to my passages, essays and recently, my sentences. Technically trying to improve my hold on the subject, and inspite of all my due respects to her in that regard from the bottom of my heart, I found, and still find it morally unethical. Yes, not exactly technical I am when it comes to English (and even engineering, much to the remorse of my exam papers. That fateful day isn't very far when I would write the story of Pyaar Ka Punchnama in my Basic Electronics paper, making BIT more celebrated than Datta Meghe College which cited DDLJ!!).

Yes, Walk the Line it is.
As the film starts with the life of young Johnny Cash raised amidst meadows and farmlands, portraying his dad in a poor light over the future of his to-be-famous genius kid, Cash junior and then lengthens into the beginning of his career as a gospel-country-singer and performer, leaving behind his earlier career in air-force, I begin to notice the bias the film against his first wife Vivian Liberto. This bias can be justifiably understood as the co-producer of the film is the only son of the couple Johnny and June Carter Cash, who basically wanted to showcase the one-of-its kind love-story of his parents. Not denying the fact that the film is an excellent attempt to do the same and has done complete justice to its cause, I can't help feeling a tangible discomfort at the shrew image of Liberto that the film has cooked up. This somewhat scrupulously compelled me to sneak some peeks into the book by Vivian Liberto Distin, called "I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny", which is her version of the life, lies and love she shared with the country-king. The major manifestation that this book has managed to achieve is the directly quoted, over "10,000 pages of love-letters" the young couple had shared when Cash was away in Germany, on a three-year tour as a US air-force employee.

 As that deserved not a brief, but a detailed towering over, I sat down(taking tips of course, as my teenage rushes away from me faster than ever before :) ) reading major chunks of it. The letters fastidiously evade the profuse negligence the film has illustrated within the character of Liberto, also defying the psychotic musing as a typical, non-loving and uninterested celebrity-housewife image shown. Vivian seemed to be as much irrevocably in love with Cash, as June Carter was, in the twilight of her life, if not more. True, June Carter was the impersonation of Cash's dream, but Viv was no less than the pioneer of the same. Vivian only blamed Johnny's new-found career when he fell a victim to extensive drug abuse, as a result of his unsuccessful attempts at drawing parallels between his flailing family life and the steep-rise of his music career. As the film almost follows a sine curve of impression for me because I incessantly flip between I walked the line and walk the line, failing to enjoy the essence of either of them.

I finally conclude and decide to return back to my Cursed Grewal with the cessation that I have executed to stumble across two unprecedented masterpieces canvassing both the sides of a Fiery ringed-coin===>Johnny Cash.

आत्मजा

मैं पंथ की पतझड़ नहीं,

बसंत की हूँ पूर्वी,

एक माया हूँ अपूर्वी,

अनादी एन देखा नहीं,

 मैं सूरज हूँ, पर ताप नहीं,

मैं रत का अँधेरा नहीं,

मैं स्वर्ण हूँ, गहना नहीं,

मैं मृगनयनी कस्तूरी,

                                         अनन्य मेरी है छवि,

                                         मैं रोशिनी की श्रेयसी,

                                         मैं गर्व हूँ कुटुंब की,

                                         मैं संत-नगरे वासिनी,

                   अनुपम, अविच्छिन्न अस्तित्व
                   की हूँ निरंतर तपस्विनी,
                   निर्संताप निः-संकोच विनम्रता 

                   की  हूँ अपूर्व स्वामिनी.

मैं हूँ तिमिर की चांदनी,

और भैरवी की रागिनी,

चकोर हूँ मैं चाँद की,

और दंभ हूँ मैं मान की.

more trivia :P

amazing!!!!
polyglot sala!

some trivia... (:))

this is a spoof of a recent development in a famous social networking site

disadvantage:::its NOT related to ashen yor...:P:P

u may see me landed in a grievous trouble if somebody does decode the answer(trust me..its not that tough)

:P:D:);)

this was described as follows:

see...dis is what ppl shud not do while explaining which COLLEGE they r from...
this looks so DESPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

hahahahah...apt indeed

n i hv a pretty good idea who this is

;)

post ur guesses

and

ENJOY 

xoxoxoxoxoxxooxxoxoxoxo

STINKING syllables

M just back from a tiring one day tour from Patna....n the round trip is more than compensating for the blast I had at Rakhi at PomPom's...
Sorry for beginning my post as abruptly as dis, but the enormous baboon of emotions zipped up inside me were threatening to burst out in an alarming act of insanity, exampli gratia: smashing a glass tumbler, or maybe, tearing away my newly bought pair of Mangoes, et al...whatever, I hope u get the hang. So as soon as I reached my spider infested room in H9, I slammed open my laptop(i hate to call it a lappy...dunno why, just hate it), keyed in www.r, clicked on the first link that appeared in my browser's me-friendly address suggestions (ie. the name of this blog) and began typing at a perturbing speed, much to the chagrin of my roomie, as she, not unlike Sheldon Cooper, is strictly against manhandling electronic stuffs. (Incidentally, she is a female reincarnation of Cooper, just in case, for future references).
I am warning you, dear reader, this post is going to be all about the gory details of a puke-inducing, nose-wrinkling bus journey undergone on the roads of a state I would not name, lest I get a lawsuit of "maanhaani" slapped upon me by the torchbearers of progress of that state (two states actually, it was a cross state-border journey :P :P). I hence disclaim myself from all responsibility if my post adheres you to your Kara bags everytime you plan a jpurney out. :D. Just to get into the feel of the post, I behest you to close your eyes for a second, and picture a non-Volvo, non-A/C state government funded-cum-managed bus "facility". Remind yourself of the grease-smeared couches, the umpteen-times-used covers. Ah...now you get the hang, the Mango-destroying instinct should now be justly justified. And kindly don't mistake me for a spoilt and pampered brat with a high nose who makes a fuss of travelling in non-air-conditioned facilities...no, I just make a fuss when I have to travel in a wet weather, with sweat-stunk strangers as the sole companions.
""

Its raining heavily. (Moron grey). I have learnt to despise the overt kindliness of Indra quite on the contrary of the feelings I used to nurse for him. The early pangs of wondrous excitement these Indrajaal had managed to induce in me have been long faded into oblivion, leaving only utter apprehension when these rains don't show even the faintest signs of stopping before a bus journey I have to undertake.
I got a seat somewhere in the middle of the aisle (aisle is too posh a word for that murky piece of world, aisle reminds me of a marriage aisle, or on a lesser romantic note, of airplane aisles). Hardly anything to mention about, unlike, as it would have been if I got the front seat or the big five seater right at the back. I settled down for a blissful, ignorant nap, with undecipherable murmurs and ramblings of  my co-travelers. Until I finally grasped the impossibility of this unworldly idea, the damage had been done. While I was trying my best to keep my eyes tightly shut, trying to ignore the dubious amount of mud that lay just inches away from my feet, and the ceaseless croaks of crickets and cockroaches that seemed to be omnipresent, someone (and I have a pretty good guess who) had quite conveniently managed to rampage my bag from the overhead racks to the front of my feet and my water bottle lay rolling on the "aisle", in the company of some I-bet-yet-unidentified-species of arthropodas. That was the precise moment, I resigned to the fact, I would have to be a thirsty caravan for the rest of my 8 hours on that goddamn bus. I also calculated the amount of cursed and swearing labor it would be required of me to wash that bag that now lay at my feet and further, the number of days it would take to dry in this rainy season, and the out-of-budget-expenditure those extra mothballs would cost me. I already wanted to cry, shout would have been a better option,at the man  who did it. But the man looked burly, surly and was sure to know more Hindi curses than me. I shrunk away non-overbearingly.
I dunno when exactly I had my next nap, but have a horribly clear picture about when it ended, which was with the screech of the brakes of the bus that seemed to be built atleast two decades ago. As the lids of my eyes started tracing the curve it is supposed to, while opening, I scanned a lot many things in quick succession, as hence follows:
1.) At angle of approx. 30 degrees:::: scores of channa shavings lying scattered on my bag.
2.) At angle of approx. 60 degrees::::: the back of the seat in front of me had red stains that looked horribly like pan spits.
3.) At angle of (a little less) approx. 90 degrees::::the ceaseless dropping of rain on the poor, bald headed man sitting on the seat with its back, obliviously stained with red (I am optimistically not using the word "paan")...how the man could stand the phenomena that had an almost perfect resemblance to third degree torture remains a mystery to me.

Stench(of public urinals and of open-air waste disposal landpieces), I assure you, is the last thing I feel like discussing here. I am suddenly reminded of the new look of my blog, adorned with thick spined books and my favorite colors brown and orange....which doesn't deserve that.
Leela, the autobiography of Leela Naidu written by her and Jerry Pinto, then came to my rescue, and how grateful I am to PomPom for my rakhi gift, only me and my God know. It was a pity, to the tastefully garnished with selected photographs from her timeline, to read about the life and lies of that damsel, married, mother of twins, and divorced at an age of twenty, the muse and unpaid secretary of Dom Morae, the equally-at-ease-with-Indian-and-European bourgeois, amidst that environment, the book is a classic, fit to be cherished amongst the likes of War and Peace, White Moghuls, inside teak, wall-lengthed bookshelves.