✍️ “From Abhāv (Scarcity) to Prabhāv (Influence) – And Yet, the Heart Remains Sad”
If you narrate an incident from forty years ago, today’s Gen-Next kids will go lamo… Yes, they don’t laugh. Even laughter has turned digital these days—Digital Atthahaas version: “Laughing My A… Off!” And we, leaning on a stick at the doorstep of old age, heave tired sighs—“What an era it was, brother!”
Back then, the only division between rich and poor was whether you owned a Camel ink pen, a Champak comic, or a fifty-paise malai ki ekulfi (creamy ice candy). All kids were ek hi thaili ke chatte-batte (peas in the same pod). Playing langdi taang in the mohalla, everyone’s legs turned equally “one-legged.” Whoever had a bat was treated like a VIP—whether it was a cricket bat or one used for pounding clothes.
If one father in the neighborhood got drunk on his fatherhood and raised a stick, the entire gang was beaten—whether you were the son of a wealthy seth or a poor laborer. “We belonged to that era when every child knew their father; nobody said—Tu jaanta nahin mera baap kaun hai? (Don’t you know who my father is?).”
“From clay toys to cable TV chaos—when scarcity gave us joy, and abundance leaves us restless. A satirical look at childhood, then and now.”
Toys of That Time
The toys of that era were a wonder in themselves. Handmade clay carts, sarakanḍe ki sentiyan (reed stems) crafted into “Make in India” handicrafts—camels, giraffes. A wire loop with a bent hook-like handle to spin it forward. That handle was an all-in-one tool: fit it onto a long stick and—voilà—you could hook it onto electric wires and enjoy free current like choonadi-revdi (free sweets at fairs).
If kites got tangled in wires, if antennas needed adjusting for Doordarshan, or if Ramdeen kaka’s mango orchard demanded some stealthy mango-picking—this very stick was the ultimate toy.
We waited the whole year for the town fair. There we’d buy wooden karakat kathi (a rattling musical stick) whose sound could be heard across the village. Toys made of crystallized sugar (khaand)—when you got bored of playing with them, you simply ate them. That was our sweet, and our entertainment.
Give these toys to today’s kids and you’d have to admit the toys to a hospital and the kids to a psychologist.
At the fair, it felt like God Himself had descended to earth. Swing rides, chooski–chooran (ice lollies and tangy powders), the thrill of watching the “Well of Death,” the magician sawing a girl into two halves and rejoining her, the curiosity of a two-faced girl—that was our adventure.
Television Tales
Television? An even stranger story. Doordarshan truly meant “door ke darshan”—distant visions. Six days of penance, just to hope that electricity wouldn’t cut off on Sunday, so we could watch Ramayan. For us, it was no less than divine darshan.
Only two TVs in the whole village. One channel. If it came, you watched. Otherwise, only dancing diagonal lines across the screen. No such thing as a remote. Watching TV meant really watching Ramayan. Even the commercials before it were devoured with full attention—like starters before the main course: “Hema, Pushpa… everyone’s favorite, Nirma!” (For years, we thought Nirma was the name of a girl!)
And today? In ten minutes, we scroll through thirty channels.
Clothes and Shoes
As for clothes, the whole household’s wardrobe was stitched from a single thaan (roll of cloth)—ghutanna shorts, kameez, chunni. The leftover scraps became handkerchiefs, table-covers, even the aenti (cloth ring to support pots).
One nikar (shorts) lasted for years. When torn, patched. When patches gave up, turned into a bag. When the bag gave up, turned into a floor mop.
Shoes? Until the sole literally abandoned you, abandoning the shoes was a crime. Slippers wore so thin you couldn’t tell whether to wear them on your feet or wave them in your hand for air. To be honest, they wore out less under our soles, more under neighborhood gossip and taunts.
Small World, Big Time
The world was small, and time was big. Afternoons dragged on endlessly. If you got a Nandan, Champak, or Lotpot comic, the joy was unmatched—even Netflix subscriptions worth thousands can’t compete.
When a video player arrived in the neighborhood, movies ran all night, one after another. The entire mohalla sat on mats spread across the floor.
Photographs? Only at weddings. The cameraman and the groom were the VIPs—pampered like kings. We kids invented a trick: always stand next to the groom—your appearance in every frame was guaranteed!
Looking back now, I feel—Was this really the time we lived in? Happiness was so cheap. Today, it feels like the market has mortgaged our laughter.
Hardship Then? Or Now?
Back then, nobody even sensed hardship. Everyone was the king of their own heart. The real hardship is now—when we have everything, yet don’t know what we want. The mind wanders like a restless deer, never finding satisfaction.
Back then, people found contentment in simple things. Anything extraordinary was accepted as upar wale ka prakop (God’s will). Eating reheated stale bread was bliss; patching old clothes was an art.
Today the scale of joy has changed—thousands of sweets, thousands of clothes, thousands of brands of shoes. But the more the choices, the deeper the despair.
As someone said:
“We build houses so big that we live in only 1% of the space, and our ego occupies the other 99%.”
Now, from marketplaces to mobile screens, it’s a flood of options. The more the mind runs, the more the body tires. And a weary man always thinks—If only that old time could return, when happiness was defined by this simple equation:
“Fewer resources, more happiness. More resources, less happiness.”
Alas—that mathematics is one we never seem to learn.
✍ लेखक, 📷 फ़ोटोग्राफ़र, 🩺 चिकित्सक
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मेरी व्यंग्यात्मक पुस्तकें खरीदने के लिए लिंक पर क्लिक करें – “Girne Mein Kya Harz Hai” और “Roses and Thorns”
Notion Press –Roses and Thorns