No mobiles, no such gadgets. All the time to have fun with family and friends. Memory lane goes down to the 70s until the advent of computers as part of education, gradually taking place in homes as play stations or the video games that kept many of our friends hooked onto making us feel backward and/or not rich enough. Alas!! But not alas, those times before comps came in, our childhood was fantastic.

Indoor and outdoor games and activities involved physical strain as well which kept us fit, never worrying about any kind of exercise schedules. Going to a gym was unheard of, after all only those specific body builders frequented the gym. It was not our kind of place. The vigorous gaming activities were good enough to shape-up bodies. Not funny, as for the females doing jhadoo-pocha was good to stay in shape. Once done every day used to show amazing results in less than a month. Of course, eating habits were limited to home cooked food and there were no burgers and pizzas which are delicious but bad on the curves. Fat deposits were actually unheard of unless there was some kind of ailment or a hereditary thing.

Long walks in the colony, post dinner or for fun and time pass, were a regular happening. That way you could meet everyone. Obviously those were the times when you wouldn’t raise an eyebrow saying “Who?” when someone from other colony asked for your neighbour four-five houses away. The GK about the colony dwellers and their profession used to be up to the mark. The people used to be paas vala padosi and dur vala padosi, but all were padosis(neighbours). The feelings of love and caring were strong back then. One house having an ailing person was the concern of the entire colony and the kids of that particular family never had to worry about sleeping hungry. This was real love, this was real family-feeling.

Where are we now? We know a few of the people in the colony, but do not know much about their life. It is only about a ‘Hi’ or a ‘Hello’ once in 2-3 days. We don’t even realise if someone is sick, in trouble or suffering financial loss…our children do not mix much since they do not have the time to put up their heads which are engrossed either in their school work or stuck on the mobile screens.  They do not even like moving out in their free time, if they have any.

If I go down the memory lane, I used to walk everyday to the corner of the road or the choraha to buy bread, pencils, veggies and other regular items. A ten minute job would take me more than half an hour since meeting people on the way and chatting was a common task. But it used to energise me. Now even getting out alone is scary for a long distance. With the growing incidences against females, walking alone carrying lots of stuff does not even sound safe.

The advent of computers actually started changing the scene. To begin with the games, computer games took too much of our attention and time and we forgot to move out and play. We forgot to balance our lives and always blamed the invention under our breath. And whatever is happening now, need not be mentioned here. Advancement in technology was supposed to make our lives easier; instead we made our lives busier than usual.

Longing to go back to the old world, I try reading books; I take walks even though alone, I am also planning to buy a bicycle for health benefits. Actually, being on a cycle and rolling slow, we can look around and see the changes that have been made. We can even spot things of interest; we can get to know who all live a little far away from us…quite possible that we might discover an old friend living just a few lanes away.

What are your plans? Do think! I am planning to go back to those lanes…the craving is strong as I write and now I even expect you to read in between lines. Pen down your thoughts as one day you will have enough to share and be here on this page re-living memories and making the people do so even more with you.

Image : rootsweb.ancestry.com, wordpress and mememe.online