Obligatory Nostalgia

As of today, I have 21 published blog posts and over 60-70 followers. I can most definitely call myself a blogger if I just make myself do intellectual stuff like attend literary festivals or read a book without crying at how few pictures it has. Couple a blogger with the fact that he was born between the 1990 and 2000 and you stumble upon the obligation he faces to write an article about how the 90s was the best time frame the universe had experienced and how nothing except the Swat Kats riding triples with Johnny Bravo on a flaming RX100 will ever hold a candle to it. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not very big on politics or the BJP, so I don’t face the obligation of telling you incessantly how Modi is going to bring back the 90s. Although, if he fails bad enough, there may be a repeat of the 2000s. Here I am, doing what I do best and giving in to obligations set by society as I write an article about nostalgia.

Maybe just a handful of people have the luxury of saying that their childhood was amazing. I thankfully fall into the right category this once and can say that without a speck of doubt. A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that I was a child who’d get impressed by something as stupid as a leaf that looked like potato, but I shall continually insist that the 90’s was what did it for me. You know how people think the earth is positioned just at the right distance from the sun in order for life to exist on this huge swirling landmass? Being born in the 90s had that sort of effect. Had I been born in the 80s or something, I would have been a teenager by the time I made it to the invention of the computer. That means there would have been no google by the time I would have been in college, which in turn means that I would not have gotten any college degree at all. If the latter had happened, and I would have been a 2000’s kid, I would not have found time to rant over nostalgia because I’d have automatically been born into a house with a decent Wi-Fi speed and uTorrent.

As a 90s kid, I sometimes feel I have a sort of responsibility. I have a responsibility to sit down with my laptop and surf the internet, which is basically a database of all the information in the world, to visit social networking sites and construct carefully worded statuses about the 90s. While I hit random mechanical keys and light up pixels on this mystery box of technology I call a laptop, I must think about instances from my childhood which remind me that how world was much simpler without the onset of all these technological breakthroughs. About how the current generation is messed up and how they are spoilt by the luxuries they possess. I must not leave out any points when I tell you how unnecessary these things are. How you basically just need a stick and a cycle tire to have a blast. I am obligated to do all of those things. If only the Internet service provider mega company was competent enough to provide a fast broadband connection to every single person living in every corner of the country, I would have found the time to wax about how technology is ruining us.

A slight side effect of sarcasm is that, not everyone gets it. Every time I see anything even closely related to the 90s, the ‘average Buzzfeed article reader’ part of me shouts out the entirety of his her known vocabulary and goes “OMG THAT IS TOTALLY ME”. I wish I could promote myself to the level of providing you with meaningful journalism in the form of “43 GIF IMAGES THAT DEFINE YOUR CHILDHOOD” or “13 WAYS HOW YOUR SHIT PATTERN DESCRIBES YOUR PERSONALITY” but unfortunately, I am not as talented as the folks at that revolutionary organization. The problem is that, everything that can be said about the 90s, has already been said about 17,342 times. An additional problem is that all these 17,342 times have talked about the same thing. Because most of the articles I have read have been Indians spurting out GRE Essay inertia on the internet, I’m pretty sure nobody really understood what that poor animal was trying to convey. A teary eyed smiley face with a semi emotional quote took care of their obliviousness. So, in my quest to continually seem like a smart person, I shall again attempt to sound like a pretentious asshole with a socially different opinion on a famous topic.

I am proud to be a 90s kind in the same way I’m proud to be an Indian. I had nothing to do with that procedure and I find it extremely hard to be proud of probability. I would say that I am extremely lucky to be a part of that magical time. I’m pretty sure that I would have turned out to be a completely different person had I been born in any other period. Clearly, that isn’t such a safe bet if you consider the fact that I could have lost out on the sarcasm and self-proclaimed wit while being stuck with the same appearance.

Being a 90s kid didn’t simply give you perks like good music and the negligence to your fashion related crimes, it also held up all the awesome things for when you were of an optimum age group to enjoy it. I have witnessed most of the peak years of Sachin Tendulkar and AR Rahman, the rise and fall of the CD, Floppy, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Okay I didn’t actually watch the rise and fall of Vajpayee but I did watch jokes about him during the time I saw the brief rise and fall of a certain comic called Shekhar Suman.

A lot is romanticized about the 90s. The simpler times and how it was not very easy to screw up colossally. How it was almost ritualistic to play cricket all day despite summers which could give an Australian a heat stroke. How tight my schedules would be, despite not having 74 tuition classes for the 4^th standard mock preliminary primary examination that counted for 0.34% of your final marks at the end of the 32^th hexamester.  How birthdays and get-togethers maintained this awkward balance of being formal and generic with the cake cutting/return gifts while being informal and batshit insane in a different way every single time. How festivals meant a jolly family get together after months of being away.  All these romanticized parts of the 90s fail to explain how much of a high-octane struggle these petty things actually were.

Forget the Malaysian flights, do you have even the slightest clue what you would have done if you lost your kid in the 90s? Forget the United Nations peace council; do you even know how to keep relations stable when you get a Charizard card in your pokemon pack while your friend gets 6 Energy cards? Don’t even talk to me about wars on terrorism man. Do you know how one had to strategize their way through cricket matches all without losing 75-100% of their friends? Bro, if you have stayed calm and composed during your birthday without opening any of the gifts until the party is over, you need to put that shit in your resume. Forget acid attacks for a minute here and focus on how you would get mortally wounded and whiplashed by your teacher in school while still trying to control your tears because of the girls around. Don’t even talk about dilemma if you haven’t had to hurriedly sort your priorities tediously everyday at 5pm because of the cavalcade of amazing shows that were on multiple channels then. Domestic violence can take a back seat my friend. Have you ever been the youngest sibling amongst your cousins? If the answer is no, I’ll just say that you do not have physical scars that need recovery. The 90s are way too romanticized and someone needs to tell these people the truth.

All said and done, I was a pathetic example in braving through these struggles in the 90s. I’ve gotten lost at a park; I’ve been chased around and beaten up by my teachers while my tears left a snail stain along the path I took; I’ve been the shameless kid at a party who shakes his gifts and immediately claws into them when I receive it and much more. If any kid now were to do either one of these things, he’d be branded as a bad influence and sent to a corrective facility somewhere in Slovakia. Besides all the amazing tv shows, endless cricket and the cycle races, I am most grateful for the fact that I didn’t experience the prime years of my childhood in a corrective facility. That, for me remains the real magic of the 90s. Now, excuse me while I check out 17 ways how my rolly chair is actually trying to kill me.