Nostalgia for the nineties

When looking through my Facebook page, I occasionally come across posts that state, “You’ll understand if you’re a 90s kid” or “Proud to be a 90s kid”. Nostalgia for the nineties

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Cindrella Mainali

Published at : November 28, 2018

Updated at : November 28, 2018 09:16

When looking through my Facebook page, I occasionally come across posts that state, “You’ll understand if you’re a 90s kid” or “Proud to be a 90s kid”. It is then I realise how different our childhood, us who grew up in the 90s, was from that of children today. The internet was something you could access only in a cyber café; you played ludo not on your smartphone but on an actual board with real dice; and a cell phone was something only VIPs carried. That was a time when children were scolded not for being glued to their phones, since we didn’t have one, but for dirtying their clothes by playing in the mud outdoors. Those were simpler times with simpler problems.

For most kids nowadays, a smartphone would probably be their most prized possession. But if you ask me what my most prized possession was as a child, it would most definitely be my old cassette player. I vividly remember our large rectangular cassette player that was on the top shelf of the room. A music lover can understand the value of such players at that time. I had all my favourite cassettes with their glistening reels neatly lined up on the shelf with all the songs they contained neatly indexed in my own handwriting. If a new album wasn’t available in the market, we skillfully recorded their songs when they were played on the radio. The trick was to start and stop recording on empty cassettes at just the right time. This way, we had a playlist of our favourite songs.

Back in the 90s, when YouTube was unheard of, we had to wait for the radio to play our favourite song. I remember, on Saturdays, most radio stations played songs on request. My sister and I wouldn’t abandon the phone for one second, dialing and redialing our favourite radio stations to play our favourite songs and dedicate them to our friends. The joy of having your name announced by the RJ was equivalent to the joy kids today feel on getting a hundred likes on their social media profile pictures.

Today, teenagers might wonder what life might be like without Facebook or WhatsApp. They might also wonder how we passed the time back then. But I assure them, we did pretty well. We didn’t have Facebook but we did have ‘real’ books. Comic books were great amusement. My personal favourites were Archie comics and Tinkle. The characters from those comics remain with me till today and honestly, they helped shape my character to a great extent.

But one thing I must admit is that kids nowadays are much sharper. They’re not as naive or gullible as we used to be. The tricks our parents and grandparents played on us to get things done don’t work anymore. Try scaring kids these days in the name of ghosts or witches and they’ll laugh in your face. This Google generation kids don’t believe anything you say.

Still, I’m proud to be a 90s kid.

Mainali is a final year

student at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India