The 1990s era is not much cherished and hyped for no reason and the children who grew up then are special for the same. As one such child, my childhood memories are stacked cosily at the heart of waning handwritten letters and landline phones and carefully wired around the advent of wireless mobiles and portable laptops. No wonder, the cohort has had the best of both worlds and could comfortably transition to rapid technological advancements of the digital era, while clinging to the tranquillity of nature and the quietude characteristic of the pre-mobile era.
The lack of technological dependence and the absence of digitisation heaped indelible memories and turned the period into a valuable treasure house, for the now, grown-up 90s children. As one, I had to finish homework before the erratic electricity supply betrayed us. And the electricity blackout meant lying down restfully on the terrace on summer nights and spotting the Great Bear constellation delightfully in the star-studded clear and cool sky. It meant staring into the sky to search for pole stars in the vast open sky after a fresh introduction to the concept at school and feeling content for being able to find that bookish stuff was real.
The sleepless sultry summer nights due to frequent power cuts also meant getting together with cousins and elders and narrating and listening to horror stories of demons and witches and fairy tales and legends and sleeping off thinking about those mystifying supernatural creatures.
With the limited entertainment resources and technology, our curiosity would naturally be drawn directly from studies and the environment. I would choose to do science home activities, driven as much by instinct and inquisitiveness as by the strictness of teachers. I would readily and playfully execute the lesson on the force of atmospheric pressure with an accompanying activity of flipping a glass of water on cardboard at home. Burning paper by focusing sunlight on a magnifying lens to see the power of focused high-intensity heat used to be as enjoyable.
And for questions that could not be answered and curiosity for more knowledge that could not be addressed by parents and teachers, we naturally found our way to books that were pulled out from school libraries and purchased from book exhibitions, with encyclopaedias being the most trusted popular choice. Pre-Google times you see!
For us, my sibling and cousins, entertainment comprised waiting for weekends to watch our loved and eclectic range of shows including cartoons such as Talespin and Arabian Nights, epic thriller sagas such as Chandrakanta and Alif Laila and equally engrossing English shows such as Small Wonder and Mr. Bean, not to forget the first Indian invincible superhero, Shaktimaan.
In addition, richly imaginative and colourful worlds of comics such as Chacha Chowdhary and Nagraj served as addiction-cum-entertainment for us, which were devoured in a few sittings. However, video games had also made inroads and graphically simple but well-built multi-level games such as Mario and Contra had a following too.
The quiet and pure leisure of the 90s children also involved observing nature, getting both thrilled and absorbed in its beauty, whether it was the incessant creaking whistles of crickets on rainy nights or running after butterflies and victoriously catching fireflies in a glass jar. The absence of ease of technology, its undue intrusion and assistance did act as a disguised blessing in some ways.
fayezah.iqbal@gmail.com
