happiness and food

Let’s begin with a disclaimer: Most of the stuff in this post is from a text message that I received last night and it made me think “Am I really old??”

I have altered the order of the statements below to suit my comfort and the examples that follow are true to the best of my knowledge.

• The new millennium is more than a decade old – How can I forget newspapers loaded with the news about the statistics of how many babies will be born on 01.01.00. Couples had scheduled C-sections so that the lucky baby is their’s. The philosophical ones – “This generation is lucky to see two millennia’s change ”, “One lifetime and two millennia’s is really lucky ” and so on..
• The Delhi metro has been running for 10 years – So, I was about to relocate to Delhi when we heard of the Metro proposal and how it’s going to transform our capital city. I remember I was in Engineering College and my then roommate Shalini and I decided to do a joy ride on the metro. We got the tickets and did an up and down trip on a Sunday to see how a Metro looks like and what all areas it covered. It was clean, well-lit, the audio aides worked fine, we were comfortable and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. Since then, I never had a second chance. What I hear now is that metros in Delhi are overcrowded and there is no space in peak hours.
• Mother Teresa & Princess Diana have been dead for 15 years – We had a solemn condolence on Mother Teresa death. She was a boon to humanity and convent schools like ours used to talk a lot to school children on her work and Missionaries of Charity. The books – General Knowledge, Hindi stories, English text books had at least one of her stories for us to read. Her death was indeed a loss to the entire world. Princess Diana death was the first celebrity car crash death that I had personally heard of. She succumbed to her injuries from the accident and England was mourning. Death never differentiates between the rich and the poor.  When it strikes – it reminds us of the power that looks upon all of us from up above.
• Jungle Book on Doordarshan – Rudyard Kipling became a household name with Jungle Book. We did not wear watches on our wrists those days but whenever on a Sunday morning, the colony streets were deserted, the TVs used to be synchronized with the title track of the show. Wonderful days with our wonderful companions – Mowgli, Sher Khan, Baloo, Bagheera!!
• When we were growing up – we witnessed the advent of landlines, colored TVs, refrigerators.
• Mobile and cellular phones used to be a thing of luxury in my college days – we paid for incoming calls and had to tell my parents to make the call crisp cos I was running low on balance. From my first salary after college, I wanted to own a cell phone with a colored screen. (seems totally unbelievable)
• Facebook has been around for 8 years and Orkut for 10!
• Railway tickets were booked through the reservation counters and there was no irctc. We got into a line at 7am to be the first one to get tickets when counters opened at 8. Though having or not having an online portal is debatable but still  🙂