I knew of a world without Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter. I even knew of a world without Internet and Cable Television. Life was so different back then. I was still in high school. Projects required a visit to the library if you wanted to do extended research. I didn’t have Wikipedia to give me all the answers. I read a lot of books in those days. I used to wake up early in the morning to catch a few minutes of newspaper before I had to surrender those rights to my father. I would then devour all the sections starting from the sports section moving to entertainment and so on. I quickly learnt to appreciate the quality of both language and content in the editorial sections.
I actually went to playgrounds and played games other than those found on my Atari. The only friend I had never met in my life was a girl from Italy who was my pen friend. We communicated 2 or 3 times a year by physically writing letters to each other and getting to learn more about our respective cultures. I would then cut out stamps from those letters and add them to my stamp book collection. I did not know any other stamp or coin collector in my neighborhood.
We watched old English and Hindi movies on VHS tapes and never thought to question its quality. If the quality was bad we would either use a VCR cleaner or simply use the tuner on the VCR and continue watching.
We had only one phone in the house and it was called landline. If you wanted another phone or did not have one in your house, you had to send an application to the telephone department and wait patiently for a few months for your allotment. There were no cell phones then. No SMS and MMS. No smartphones and awesome apps.
Satellite television had not yet invaded our homes. In India, we have one channel called Doordarshan or “DD 1” that was available to everyone. If you lived in one of the major cities of the country, you also had “DD Metro”. They broadcasted songs for 30 minutes once every Wednesday. No 24 hour music channels. We all watched the same shows and had common ground to discuss.
It seems like an era has gone by but it has been less than 20 years. Life has completely transformed. For the good and for the bad.
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