1985

The year was 1985.


It was as Dickens so magnificiently put it: the best of times: it was the fairly OK of times.
It was the age of the communist collapse; it was the age of Sridevi on top. It was the time of Vespa scooters arriving in India, it was the time of Priya Pickles going global, It was the age of NTR taking up sanyas (and then changing his mind to marry a young woman), it was the time of The Ambanis and their love for Tina Munim.


It was the time of the Indian Cricket Team under Sunil Gavaskar being crowned WORLD CHAMPIONS in Australia and Ravi Shastri being crowned the CHAMPION of CHAMPIONS and driving his AUDI all over the cricket ground in a totally Indian Manner with people on the bonnet and some team members spilling out of the open Doors....

It was as always, the age of fiery summers and fond, freaky monsoons in India.

It was the time of of the beloved *(few) and that of the reviled (many). It was as it always seems to be in India,

The age of blinking HOPE mingled with remarkable resilience. It was the the age of 'just the same'.

Yet change was just around the corner waiting to pounce.

And finally it was the time when I, my mother and my brother spent a glorious one year in GOA and we went to school on the Miramar Beach (panjim) at Sharda Mandir...


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I get all nostalgic thinking back to that time when we left Delhi behind for a year and ended up never returning (at least for my parents) and my four years of vanvas before making a somewhat triumphant return to the city where I was born.