THEN & NOW … !

Circa 1980-90:
Summer holidays used to be something I would eagerly look forward to. Summers were full of hectic activity, mainly outdoors. It would start with early morning cycle hiring from Amin bhai’s shop with spins around the colony with a cacophony of cycle bells ringing. We would alternate between cycling or traditional Indian games such as marbles, lagori, tikkar , langadi, kabaddi, saakhali or vitti dandu. Langadi would sometimes also be a challenge match between boys v/s girls.

The landline calls were costly and every pulse tick on the phone set the callers pulse rate racing. Cell Phones were not even heard of. How can we forget the two volume telephone directory (to accommodate the subscriber base – A  to M and N to Z ). Since phone calls were costly, we kids would devise our own special cat calls which would get most of us up even from a deep slumber, to quickly gather friends for a game.

After a cycle ride, it would be a quick bath followed by gulping down breakfast to make it in time for a match of under arm cricket within the colony premises. These matches would be very keenly contested. Lofted shots once in a while would crash into a glass window of a friendly (if you are lucky) neighbour,  breaking his window pane. An “innocent sorry”and all was forgiven – since his son would invariably also be part of our cricket jamboree!!!

Next it would be time for lunch followed by indoor games like a game of cards or Monopoly or Vyapar (Indian equivalent of monopoly). There would be times when parents would be away and then we would venture to play “Black out/Dark room“. Getting your Ramon Bonus stamps or Tutty Fruity wrappers pasted on  the album could also be a keep busy activity. Indoor games would keep us in doors till at most 4 pm, post which it would be time for cricket or even “dabba aais spice” once again till well into the darkness of a late evening when actually one could barely see.

Some of us who were enterprising would also start a partnership to set up a library by pooling together books (mostly Hardy Boys, Agatha Christie, Secret Seven Adventures) along with comics (Ritchie Rich , Archie, Tintin or Amar Chitra Katha).

Sundays would be for the Hindi feature film 6:00 to 8:30 pm. All play stopped, public places , roads would be empty. Guess what? all these films were in black and white till the 1982 Asian games , which launched the colour TV in India. The choice of channels would be DD-1 (National)  and DD-2 (Regional).

Schooling: The main debate amongst parents would be whether to get the child into vernacular medium or English. Almost all went to SSC or at the most CBSE schools, if your parents were on a transferable job. SSC school fees per month were in single digits. At school, we would be looking forward to getting pocket money for the Saturday snack at the school canteen – batata wada @ 25 p with a Thumbs Up as an add-on. The craze would be to collect the Thumbs Up crowns to be exchanged for the flicker book with Gavaskar’s hook shot or Kapil Dev’s bowling action.

If you were good at  studies to qualify for the 7^th Std. scholarship, your parents would feel generous and gift the much coveted HMT quartz wrist watch. If not then the watch would have to wait until the tenth standard pass out. The watch with your father would be an old faithful 15 year plus with no battery mechanical key.

Career options were very limited. The classical aspirational career path would be complete 10^th, join science college – complete 11^th/12^th. Hope to be amongst the top 10 percentile to get into an engineering or medical college. If not then get into diploma engineering college. If you were the topper types then get into the IIT for engineering.

For commerce students enrolling for  a CA (Chartered Account course; also known as Come Again due its stringent passing standards approx. 1-2%)  and hoping to complete it within  5 years, would be the natural choice. Start studying for the Public Sector Unit exams – SBI clerical or Probationary officer or Railway or any other PSU entrance exams. If you got through you have arrived and life would take its own course… marriage can happen and you can hope to live happily ever after….

 Cars on road would be the ubiquitous Premier Padmini or the Ambassador bought after enrolling on a waiting list. The ultimate waiting list was for the Bajaj Scooter. Double decker BEST buses would ply.

Music was all about the record player- a turntable with a stylus which would play the LP. If you were modern, the ultimate gadget would be the Casio Digital Watch and the Sony  Walkman. (Walkman was the ultimate uber cool gadget one would flaunt).

Cricket : Test Series were the main draw with one dayers (ODIs) just about getting introduced as an add-on. International Cricket would be followed on radio commentary via short wave frequency. On Sunday’s, it would be Cricket with Vijay Merchant on AIR sponsored by his company Thackersey Group. Vijay Merchant would anchor the show peppering it with anecdotes from test cricket. Mumbai reigned supreme in the domestic scene. Enthusiasts/ fans would travel to see even the local tournaments – Times Shield matches between Nirlon ( Sunil Gavaskar, Sandeep Patil, Karsan Ghavri ), Mafatlal (Ashok Mankad,  Chandu Pandit), Tata Sports Club (Lalchand Rajput, Ravi Shastri, Raju Kulkarni ) Some of the club matches e.g Dadar Union and Shivaji Park Gymkhana would also have a sizable following.

Movies: Popular Hindi movies would run in theatres for 25 (Silver Jubilee) / 50 weeks (Golden Jubilee),  some such as Sholay mashed all records to run without a break at Minerva for 5 long years.

Fast Forward – 2020
Now you hardly get to see outdoor physical activity, Kids are outdoors alright but on mobile phone/ computer games with PS2, Nintendo. Kids hardly discuss the latest cartoons on TV- no Donald Duck, Tom & Jerry or Charlie Chaplin as for these kids, it’s all about online games like PUBG.

TV shows selected from a massive range of over 100 channels beamed across by private broadcasters or involve binge watching on Netflix or Amazon Prime original content. 

Address: You try and ask for address and invariably you will get the kid narrating his email address, postal address is passee. Penpals are converted into online chat pals…socialising no longer means going down and meeting your nukkad friends round the corner, it means logging onto a social networking site and connecting to online chat either on your mobile or laptop.

Books:Exchanging books is replaced by exchanging links to browsing ebooks, playing board games ,  has been replaced by playing games online remotely.

Watches: Watches are dime a dozen. Kids get watches to go with every dress (especially, if you are a girl). By the time you pass out, you have min 2-3 watches – a digital, sports, party watch.

Gadgets: Now gadgets have a very short cycle.  Walkman, iPOD – do not almost exist. It is all about a digital music playlist on the cloud. A few years back, when we were shifting houses, I showed some LP records to my son. Guess what went through his mind ? His imagination ran wild and he could not believe that during our times, we had these massive CDs !!!! Mobiles are the jazziest gizmos, iPod, iPod Touch are almost history as iPhone  with access to emails, web, camera, music all rolled into one is “The uber cool” device.

Key Indicators	1990	2008	2020
Sensex peak	1,000	21,000	45,000
Re/USD	23/$	43.50/$	75/$
Emerging Sectors	Majority old Economy with IT at a very nascent stage	New Economy – BPO, IT, ITEs; Financial Services –Banking, Insurance, MF and beginning of the Service economy and Entertainment industry	Explosion of the Digital Economy – Data science, Gaming, Startups, Gig economy; Sharing economy
Salary -Fresher
Management Grad. (Tier 1 insti.)Rs pm	5,500	50,000	1.50 -2.0 lacs
Fresh Grad.Rs pm	2,500	20,000	25,000
CBD@Mumbai	Nariman Point, Cuffe Parade	BKC, Lower Parel, Malad Airoli, Thane Belapur	W-F-H/ W-F-A*
Global Events	Google is yet to be born	Financial crisis	COVID strikes
Cost of Mobile call/min	Rs 16 (1995 launched) incoming+outgoing	Rs 1.20 incoming+outgoing	Rs 0.50p/ incoming free
Aspirational Car for middle class	A/c Fiat / Ambassador with bucket seats and floor shift gears	Choice amongst Hyundai I 10, Maruti Estilo, Tata Vista	Mini SUV with sunroof, automatic

Cricket: It is being played round the year and broadcast live across channels. Radio commentary is hardly followed. If ODI was the shorter version of cricket, T20 and IPL is the next frontier. With surfeit of cricket, there is hardly any following for the local and domestic cricket matches. 

Schooling: The choice is across SSC, ICSE, CBSE, IGCSE. Needless to say , all this is in English. School fees range from Rs 18,000 pa to Rs 5 lacs pa. Once out of school, a computer coding course (e.g White Hat Jr.)  is a MUST.

Movies: Now most popular movies run for 2-3 weeks. About 500-600 copies are distributed to maximize the box office before the movie is made available on OTT platform. Small screen Netflix and Amazon Prime are competing with Big screen with original content. 

Needless to say, while technological innovations have brought about this immense transformation  across the globe. One can trace and reach out to friends across the world without any telephone directory and without having to even leave your desk. Today we have technology which provides faster and more precise solutions to almost all aspects of life. However, much as today’s generation has its own definition of life and lifestyles, somewhere one gets a feeling that the human connect which was “then” so prevalent has “now” become extremely porous. One is left with a feeling that even the  ‘depth’ of human relationships has gone too shallow. However, I’m an eternal optimist and I’m seeing a ray of hope with Gen Z opting for the “phygital”– a combination of physical and digital i.e the digital tools to reach out to hold physical meet ups to hangout and sometimes also play boardgames. Cheers !

Acknowledgements : My Friend Ashish Parulekar for being a solid member of my blog support team.
P.S To read my other blogs on Cricketing / Corporate Tales, Start up stories, Finance, Covid Times, Friends, Family and Marriages go to the Home Page