The other day I was talking to my sister and we happened to discuss how our social conditioning influenced our personalities and how it even now keeps trying to set direction & limits to our thought process.Growing up in a conservative society we were not allowed to have certain thought patterns.Nobody set the rules.It was part of the super-culture that still dominates the society where we grew up.And it is true for most societies, even the relatively progressive ones.I have often wondered how & why people often do not recognize these constraints.This is more surprising, because as I see it, one of most basic human traits is to rebel, to overcome- that is how the human race came till here.Yet the majority of us choose to adhere.Are we evolving into something different?
Maybe it is because the big picture is bigger than what anyone of us can see or understand. Or may be we are just not interested in all these random thoughts, after all there are better things like food,shelter and the pleasure of daily struggle, all of which offer simpler and more possible means to happiness and fulfillment, all which while being transient, are also enough for the time being.
But again the question here is not about the big picture, it is about why we set limits, knowingly or unknowingly, when all we want deep inside our hearts is to go beyond them..
Thanks to Narasimha Rao & Manmohan Singh ,I spent my childhood in two different Indias. The pre-liberalization era which was slow and protected ( & dull to my cousins who came on vacations from the Gulf) and the post liberalization period which saw a new life being pumped into everything.
Both had its charms.Though I for most part welcomed the changes that were coming ,like the addition of DD Metro and DD4 to DD1, the only channel we had till then .The come back of Coke ,the arrival of Big bubble chewing gum and more Jackie Chan movies meant the future was only going to be exciting.
However there were certains things which I thought were supposed to be there forever.Like the Ambassadors & Chetaks.The Chetak more so because I literally grew up on two Chetaks.The first Chetak,which my father brought from his friend was gold in colour and now looking back, looked very humble - but it still gave me one of the proudest & happiest days in my life when it came home.I was the smallest and had the rare privilege to stand between my father's driver seat and the handle bar whenever we used to go out on it.Our family of five used to travel with ease across the streets of Trivandrum -the scooter held us together..:) like it did many other families across India.
Saturday mornings became duty time for me as the assistant mechanic to my father who used to clean the spark plugs,wipe the engine and the tilt the scooter to reach what I called the 'Chetak Degree ', the point at which petrol flowed from the tank to the engine and pushed out whatever air was stuck inside the engine tubes.Visits to the local scooter mech was a monthly thing.
The coming home of the second Chetak was an even prouder day for us as it was a brand new scooter made in the new Bajaj plant in Nasik.It was green and bigger than our old scooter , which by then was sold to a friend of my father. This scooter took us everywhere ,to the market,library,to our friends' homes ,sometimes to school and tuitions and once even all the way from Trivandrum,Kerala to Marthandam,Tamil Nadu when my father went in search of the best (read 'the cheapest' ) construction sand in South India for our new house.
It was the end of the 90s and by then most of scooter families has started getting their first cars, the Maruti 800s.I turned 18 around that time and the fact that the Chetak was no longer the primary mode of family transport helped me make the case to my father that it was my turn...he happily obliged, probably wondering what was wrong with his son, he did n't ask for the Hero Honda.And so it was my turn..and it was my street hawk.I used to ride the green scooter , sun glasses and all on, through the busy streets of Trivandrum..to catch the lastest Mohanlal flick at Sreekumar , to buy beef from Palayam market,to the Museum grounds to gang up with friends & get a secret smoke and on bright sunny days to Kovalam or Shanghumugham ,to lie down on the beach and look up to enjoy the Trivandrum sky in all its sunny glory....
Achan sold the scooter sometime after 2000, when I got my bike & left for college and no longer had time for it.I used to look at it though whenever I went to the garage.I used to wonder why Bajaj used to sell us this clunky piece of machine and why we loved it, why we kept it..and will be soon overcome with guilt and leave the garage immediately, unable to look at the humble headlight , the faded paint work or the rusted body.I realize now that however outdated and clunky it was; it was family .And that every picture that I have in my mind about my home has a green scooter parked in front of it.
I hope all of you ,if not at least most of you might ,or maybe at the least some of you might be very familiar with 'Malgudi days'.I am not talking about the book,which incidently Ihave not read,but about the televised version which I saw as a kid every week in Doordarshan some 20 years back.
The reason why this has come back to my mind and fingertips is that I happened to read about this somewhere in the net last week,and I happened to get this link( of the copyright owners)where you can see some of the episodes.
Casually I hovered over the links wondering whether I had enough time to spent over this, but ultimately made the click.I was riveted for the next 2 hours and watched 4 episodes at a stretch.
The freshness of Malgudi and the innocence of Swami (played by Manjunath) took me back through my memories to the nights when we three kids,Achan,Amma and Babychechi,our maid servant ;used togather in front of our old Dyanora TV to catch 30 minutes of Malgudi.Babychechi did not understand a bit of Hindi,but laughed along with us when my eldest sister gave the running translation for each of the dialogues.Achanof course was the serious one,breaking out with a laugh only once in a while.
It was not just Malgudi,there was WaglekeDuniya,Fauji and Mahabharath..of course everything used to be in Hindi,we were sad that nothing was there for us in the south.But all of them had some standard and the whole neighbourhood could enjoy them.(Something like the Bill Cosby Shows in US)
My parents always made it a point that we watch all these as a family,if not as a neighbourhood.Everybody was welcome. And these 30 Mins played a very important role in building up our characters as kids,it was not just the show.
Twenty years later we have more than 300 channels nationwide,but not a single program or channel has been able to replicate the magic which DD did for us.India has changed a lot,the people,the economy,lifestyles..and I sometimes feel that those good old days were the best,though they were not the best in all ways.And these thoughts are reinforced by the trash we have in TV now.. Clearly,Those were the magical days; when even TV serials had souls..:)
