happiness and food

Garbage Bin is India’s most popular comic strip and I am a big fan. No not the one who share posts or comments regularly but the one who never misses catching up and always smiles at the gag and thinks – “How creative and thoughtful these folks are!” Not just that, sometimes at work we discuss previous gags and laugh about the ones that we remember. Sometimes I wonder if the creators really know me or the kind of place I come from or are they like me – a small town kid ?

What makes the Garbage Bin team so popular and loved? Do you know that their every single gag fetches tens of thousands of likes and over five thousand shares? Not just a few but even the ones that are the simplest are equally loved. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Faisal or Shah Nawaz, but reading between the lines on those gags and using a bit of my observation powers, I know that these guys know how to tap the best memory of their childhood. And why I say so? If you born in the late 70s or the early 80s, their gags bring back a lot of happy memories. The ones that I don’t recall when talking to my friends.

Want a few examples? So, how many hands would go up in the air if I ask, have you been told to talk in English at home so that you can be more fluent? Well, I was told!

Do you remember how you used to make that puppy face when you did something wrong and your Mum would just forgive you?

Do you remember how while growing up, you have played pranks on your closest school friends and poor friends landed in trouble?

Those memories from school, from home, the blankets in winters or the layers when the cold wave used to engulf people are locked in some part of the brain with us. Not that we do not talk about those days but only Garbage Bin knows how to put that in monochrome, in form of a comic strip and of course in the most simple and funny manner and give you that moment back from your childhood.

Not just that, Guddu, our favorite character from the comic strip is our quintessential next door boy – always running into trouble, loves his parents but drives them nuts, loves Maggi and of course the teachers are after his life. In a way Guddu reflects a little part of our each of our personality and hence is loved so much.

Memories are good but so what? If you ever read a gag, you will see that readers comment and they do that in the most genuine way. You will see that some will share a memory or a quirky incident from their past and then other readers will nod in unison. What it means is these gags are not just a comic strip, they are a form of coming together to say, yes, we know where you are coming from. We know that we are all growing up and left behind are those little memories that tied us together to those we loved – teachers who we made fun of and parents who were loved but we never realized till we grew up.

A friend of mine at work JT wants to meet the GB team and is also appreciative of the humility that the team exhibits. The team replies to almost every comment on their comic strips showing that yes they have a FB page with over 950,000 likes but so what? They know how much the audience means to them and they are humble to respect that.

Life is a big bag of memories and with every passing day, we accumulate or stack them in this bag. There comes a time in the daily hum drum of life when these memories get buried so deep down that unless a thoughtful trigger is thrown right in front of us, we fail to feel it back again. And Garbage Bin for me is that trigger – the one that taps into my memories.

Thank you team for making me smile, laugh, discuss and sometimes wipe that little drop of tear from the corner of my eye!

Quick Question for Garbage Bin Team – I have heard you guys sell your merchandise? If you do and I can afford them from my pocket-money, I would love to buy! Also, how about giving us the choice of which gags takes the form of a product? It will be fun! 🙂