The Wonder Years

I was watching one of the umpteen re-runs of the Wonder Years one evening. And I thought to myself - if as a kid growing up in the halycon socialist days of yesteryear India, I were to make a movie/tele-serial on my life how would it pan out to be?

Aaah, the 80's - the decade in which I was born into - the decade that had Cyndi Lauper's she-bopping minus Hanson's umm-bopping - what a decade of cultural upheavel - a decade that bridged the divide between the uber cool swinging' 70's and the uber-modern 90's [we had cable TV for chrissakes!]. The decade where if you wanted the answer to a question you turned up to your dad or mom and asked : Where do babies come from? or When was the International Labor Organization founded? Sadly you parents weren't exactly wise to answer either question, and after some humming and hawing they bought you one of those "General Knowledge 1987" books - books on current issues and event? Don't we call that a www.cnn.com ticker these days?

Those days growing up were tough. No TV and definitely no internet. The TV was a queer thing - we had a TV which had 16 channels - 15 actually, and one earmarked for the VCR. The remote control used to weigh a brick and very often my brother or I have used it to give each other concussions during our numerous fights. My VCR had a remote too - except instead of working on Infra-red, it was actually a wire connected to a VCR port - wow! That was really lame.

In the 80's all technology was smuggled and/or purchased from "Foreign" - which was code word for Dubai or Singapore or the US of A. Customs officers had all the time on their slovenly hands to emasculate anyone who brought in a piece of technology : it didn't even matter if it were a 2-ex-or gate or a North Korean missile muncher. As a country our govenment was socialist by profession, capitalist by confession and Stalinist by obsession. Buying anything good in those days always attracted a penalty from the Government - but that was only because nobody in India ever really paid Income Tax in those days.

So in the 80's we were Socialist [spread the poverty], and hence we had two Government authorized channels : DD1 and DD2. DD1 was more of the heavy duty stuff, usually meant for adults - occassionally if a leader died you'd know : because some nondescript Sarangi player biled his guts out on the telly. Which meant no entertainment programming for a few hours - you were forced to mourn the death of the guy! How dare you otherwise! DD2 was the yuppier of the two, and typically carried more entertainment programming - like 1 hour of ramayana per week or one hindi movie every Saturday evening - something which brought the whole nation's kitchens to a standstill, and then mahabharatha. I still re-call waiting 7 whole days for 30 mins of HE-MAN every Sunday evening. Or for that 30 mins of "Jonny Sokko and his Flying Robot" every Tuesday evening - which was a Japanese dubbed sci-fi from the late 50's and early 60's : Eastman color in all its GLORY!
DD had all the trappings of Nazi-like indoctrination when it came to programming. Usually it was under the guise of the National Film Center for Kids or some other government gobble-de-gook department whose clear mission was to teach us the virtues of sharing, and that posession of material property was evil. We had such great imports as Hungarian cartoons, Romanian puppetry, East German slapstick and other Soviet Bloc imports - if the Kremlin Politburo didn't approve of it, we couldn't see it.
I recall spending my summer holidays literally doing nothing most days except play in the mornings and evenings. The afternoons were mostly spent trying to do pansy things - like draw or paint or read comics. Sometimes my mom would pop in an old cartoon in the VCR. If I got bored, I'd swing my bat around and play pretend cricket. But the best entertainment was if my brother was around we'd fight. And then my Dad would come and beat the crap out of us for ruining his afternoon siesta. But mostly that. We weren't burdened by tuitions or coaching classes or learning or doing something that kids these days are forced into.
My life panning out as a tele-serial would suck - so would any kid who'd grown up with me in the miserable and god-awful decade called the 80's.
Well, all it does it makes me appreciate what I have today.