REMINISCENCES OF A SEXAGENARIAN

Reminiscences of  a Sexagenarian 

Reminiscing or going down the memory lane is therapeutic if you want to remember good and happy memories.They can bring a smile to your lips or  guffaws if you are sharing with a sibling or old friends. On the other hand sad memories bring tears and heartache. I wouldn’t go there!

I don’t remember much about sixties. I guess the life was black and white like the movies. About movies I remember seeing many from the front benches where our peon would seat the four of us, leaving the youngest who was a toddler at home, thankfully. And being the eldest I remember he would pay one rupee for four “passes” which the cinema owner would oblige us with, being the kids of Tehsildar sahib.

Ah those seventies! Who wouldn’t remember the bell bottoms, elephant pants and parallels. As the name would suggest the elephant pants were even wider than the loose parallels. For a while lungis also came in fashion, so our mother sacrificed a couple of old sarees to get those made for me and my sister, also a visiting aunt and a cousin and we would proudly flaunt those uniforms around! I remember wearing tunics with double breasted Jacket and trousers to a movie “Kal Aaj Aur Kal” and feeling delighted at seeing the hero wearing the same combination..the HERO not the heroine! How innocent we were!

Seeing my interest in photography my parents had gifted me an Agfa Click camera worth fifty rupees. It was my prized possession for many years. I still have black and white pictures of my sister combing my grandma’s hair or another one with my brother sitting as a king, one sister fanning him from the back, the other brother standing and blessing like a Rajguru and the youngest sister draped  in a dupatta saree sitting on the floor with folded hands, directed and clicked by me.

            The mornings would invariably start with film songs on Urdu Service on radio, our only source of entertainment for a while. Then we got HMV record player with LP records, our prized possession for a long time. After a couple of failed attempts to watch tv at friends’, our father agreed to buy us a black and white TV on the condition that we would not go to the plains for our winter vacation. So now we could see those weekly Chitrahaars and movies at home. One benefit of living in a hill station was that along with Amritsar Doordarshan we could catch Lahore TV loud and clear. So we got hooked to Pakistani dramas like Uncle Urfi, Dhoop Chaon et al.

TV was black and white but it was fun to watch cricket test matches as the players wore white. We would dread the death of any political leader as for days the tv and radio would only broadcast mourning classical music that would kill us. 

         Those days the concept of holidays was limited to visiting grandparents or relatives who lived in plains where it did not snow in winters. likewise they would visit us in summers when the weather used to be pleasant in our town. We would take them around for picnics to picturesque places around in Papa’s official jeep. 

For us teenagers, the greatest fun was our daily walks where our friends would join us on the way. We would be a giggling judgemental flock of girls on the winding roads making fun of the tourists and breaking into chaste English when anybody passed us.

I remember once my sister and I made fun of a gentleman for his unusual style of walking, repeatedly mumbling  “twisting man” while passing him on the road. A couple of days later we were aghast to see him on our door. He was an officer in the PWD and had come to meet father on some business. We were scared to death that he would complain to Papa about us but thankfully he never did or probably had not heard us.

        Those days we thought we rocked as we could sing along ABBA and Carpenters and shake a leg or two on Boney Ms. It was the in thing to be abreast of the latest “pop” music. We used to have jam sessions at home crooning to Nazia Hassan’s Disco Diwane. “Bobby” had been a craze and almost all  girls had the posters of the lead couple in their rooms. My parents were kind enough to allow Star and Style along with The Illustrated Weekly, Readers Digest and Dharamyug to our home subscriptions. So I was fully familiar with how Kaka (Rajesh Khanna) proposed to Dimple or how Dharam Garam was chasing Hema Malini.

          My parents were also musical. both could sing beautifully something which I have not inherited unlike other siblings. I have fond memories of some evenings when power would be off and all of us would sit in the glazed varandah under candle lights and our parents would sing old songs and duets.

          My father especially had high expectations as far as my studies were concerned, me being his eldest I guess. And I tried to never let him down. He was a law graduate with Honours in  English and his command over the language was astounding. None of us come anywhere near him. He would often make me write a précis of an editorial from the Tribune. Listening to English news was always a part of the day. He would dictate to me my speeches extemporaneously whenever I would be participating in declamations or debates which was often.

             

 

 

              *To be continued.....