Pickles of Kandhala

Kandhala is small town near Shamli, not so far from Delhi. This is where my maternal grandparents lived. With the passing away of my nani last year, a big chapter of my life has come to a close. Of course my uncles are still there and the story continues, but it's not the same for me. To some extent, my Kandhala memories are sort of like Malgudi days stories - simple childhood in a simple town where small things mattered. Now I live in a country that has over abundance of everything. Things that were bought after saving money for weeks and were given the utmost attention and care are now tossed around by relentless customers in the buy-one-get-one-free heap. So writing about Kandhala is an attempt to bring back the same simplicity in my life.

With Spring round the corner and summer not too far, the smell of mangoes has started rising in the air again. Kandhala was the mango heaven for us. Since, most of our visits to Kandhala happened during the summer months, it was almost certain that we would get to eat lots of mangoes. We had our own baags, so supplies were unlimited. Often times we would sit on the buggi (bullock cart) and take a ride to the baag, and the sheer joy of plucking the mangoes yourself and eat them right there is wordless. Almost every day we used to get fresh supplies of all kinds (dasheri, langra, chaunsa, etc). And we would start in the morning and continued eating mangoes throughout the day either during meals or otherwise. I still remember at one time, often times we used to gulp doen 9-10 mangoes in one sitting itself, without bothering about the funsis that we would get later on our face. Of course often times you have to dip the mangoes in cold water overnight to cool that down but often times we were too greedy and didn't wait for that. In the afternoons, then, we would feed the mango skins to the cows, buffaloes in the gher (dairy). Towards the end of the stay, almost every year, then naniji, and other aunts and mom would then sit down to make mango pickles. Raw mangoes were cut and dried for several hours. As they were dried out in the big aangan on white sheets, they started losing bit of their sourness, and we would then feast on them, much to the anger of all the ladies. Once dried, the mangoes were then put in the oil with special masala, in a jar and a piece of thin cloth was then wrapped around its lid. After a few days the mango would become seasoned, and that would be the best tasting pickle ever.

Here is a link to the recipe -

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Pickled-Mango


Even now, whenever I went to Kandhala, I always brought mango petis from there that would last many many days. No mango can be sweeter than the Kandhala mango.

When the fuse blew at our house

Courtsey: www.overunityresearch.com

During high school, my passion for science was unbound. I was more inclined towards the practical side of it. I used to love the science lab times, and I ran several experiments running at my house too. I made a very powerful binoculars (that I used to spot chicks sometimes), and one time made one for Ajay also when we were trying to get a closer look at Mussorie snow topped hills. I was already playing around with electronic components and soldering iron and the circuits. I even had a small chemistry lab. However not all experiments ran succesfully. Some were mere blunders, and one of them was on my quest for electromagnetism. The book said that if you wrapped wire around a bolt and connect the ends to positive and negative terminals, the nail would become magnetic. Excitedly, I put the model together and plugged the ends into the wall socket. As soon as I turned the switch on , the whole house went dark!!! I didn't realize that the intensity of the current had to be controlled. Well, I guess I was still maturing; Edison didn't invent light bulb in one take, did he?

I continued to ponder over this experiment for 30 years until today. When kids decided to participate in the Science fair, old memories nudged me and I immediately decided to give my experiment a second take. These days are different though. There it too much information available online already, and for something simple like this a you tube video sufficed. We took a nail, wrapped some copper wire around it and connected the ends to a battery (ah!). Eureka, it worked, and it was pretty strong, too.

Cutting Chai

Purani jeans aur guitar
Mahulle ki wo chat aur mere yaar
wo canteen mein ja ke, guppe ladate,
wo cutting pina yaaron ke saath

Courtsey: http://www.doornumber3.in/images/gd_en_eymum_chai.jpg

Well may be not in the college canteen, when I was in Bombay, I used to drink cutting every day. One of the cutting places I remember is on the side of Bombay hospital in Marine lines. After days worth of hard work, it was quite relaxing to just sit in this small restaurant, over crowded with other workers, and sip on the kadak and masaledaar cutting. Whether that was more relaxing or a patiala peg of RC at this bar down the road remains a puzzle to me.


Also, here is a link that explains how to make cutting chai, in case you want to try it out at your home in Indian, Dubai, US, or on a ship -

http://www.mumbaigluttons.com/2012/03/how-to-get-create-that-roadside-cutting.html

However, for complete flavor, you got to try it out somewhere in Mumbai. I amsure they have a stall near Marine club, as well. They have great beer, though, live music and ladies to dance with. Although, that can be covered in another story, hopefully, through Mayank's lens on the past.

Phir wohi raat hai - Ghar 1978

This song has been on my mind for several weeks now. Wonderful wonderful memories from the 70s, 80s.

White kurta pyzama clad Vinod mehra with his sleeves typically tucked up above the elbow..so typical of that era with wide bottomed pyjamas. Long hair with long sideburns and ears half covered and most of the neck covered with them.
Graceful Rekha with her face blossoming like the most beautiful Rose..large bindi on her forehead and red think sindoor in her neatly parted hair and her curly hair falling over her shoulders.

While the nice summer breeze is waving the white curtains through the iron grills of their bedroom, Rekha is restless on the bed with stark clean white sheets, Kishore kumar is at his best singing Gulzar lyrics on the tunes of R. D. Burman. It couldn't get any better. I am sure life wasn't as simple in those days either but for me those were the good days.

Vinod and KK passed away long time ago. Gulzar is harldly active these days and Rekha is only seen on award shows, but their legacy lives on.

Vat69 and other miniatures

Mmmmm.... Courtsey: oldblendedwhisky.com

I think my first encounter with vat69 was in the movie Naseeb. There was a song with Amit, Reena, and Shatru where Shatru is drinking. He comes to the bar and drinks from vat69 bottle. Of course we didn't drink in those days, but it did seem enchanting at that time. vat69 was one of the most popular whiskeys in those days, and of course later on, Johnnie walker took over, and now it's all about 'labels'. Apparently, the drink is still in production. You can read more on it here -


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vat_69
 
Back in 80s, when we were experimenting with liquor, it was more about bagpipers, mcdowells, and RCs. I picked up big on whiskey. I know Dinesh, Ajay, Mayank, Ashish, etc. didn't. Of course, Ashish got his style from his dad who had his own taste in style - while we thought 10Re was too much, he donned a 200Re goggles, and he was always uptodate on electronics, steroes, etc. In their drawing room showcase (you know how those 80s showcases were), Gulati uncle had these miniature whiskey bottles displayed. I don't know where he got them from, but they looked enticing. During the summers of the 80s & 90s, I often used to hang around at Ashish's house. We were either playing teen patti, or were trying to take a peek inside the maid's blouse. If that was not available, we would try and get some amroods from his backyard, and sometimes, anil and sonu would jump over the boundary and join in.  

Courtsey: A collector on internet

During one such summer afternoon, when uncle and aunty were gone, we laid our hands on the miniature whiskey bottles. We drank a little and evened it our with water. In dark bottles, it would be difficult to make out whether it's liquor or water. When uncle didn't notice anything, we continued on our adventure, and every now and then drank from the bottles. Now I don't what the state of the bottles is now or whether one day uncle tried them and wondered why they tasted like water or not (onyl Ashish can tell us), but it was a lot of fun.

Pics from 1999- Celebrating frist ever Corn railcar loaded for Venky's

A great adventure in young life.
Harihar a small moffusil town of Karnatka known for its Harihar temple .
Good first taste of Dosa as Kannadiga's enjoy , Jawari roti  and coconut milk @ INR 2/-

Rental Movies

So this evening when my sisters asked me to get some DVDs from the market, I was pulled by unknown forces to the same shop where I rented 'Cobra' 20 yrs ago; this was during one of the video rental nights as captured in one of earlier blog entries. I just couldn't belive the same shop exists in almost the same shape. I expected to buy one of those 10 movies in a DVD kind of deals. To my suprise, these guys didn't sell those things. Instead, they continue in the same tradition of 20 yrs ago. yes, they are still renting movies, in the same old style fashion. They said they didn't believe in selling like others are selling (road side stalls or even mobile thelas are selling those), rather they have their "library". After I picked up couple of titles, namely Aurangzeb and another one, he duly put my name down on the card and got 200 Re deposit, as well. The deposit was ridiculous, considering these were not original DVDs. Anyways, I was taken back to the movie night days and for some reason, I am valuing these movies more as rentals than if I had bought them from a thela!

Mumbai washed up

Awesome pics of Mumbai. Couldn't resist posting them here -

http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-must-see-uddhav-thackerays-pixss-of-maximum-city/20120224.htm

Faith over the years

Sankrit sholka goes :

OM shanno mitraH sha.n varuNaH sha.n bhavatyaryamaa sha.nna indro bRRihaspatiH viShNururukramaH nomo brahmaNe namaste vaayo tvameva pratyaksha.n brahmaasi tvaameva pratyaksha.n brahmavadiShyaami RRita.n vadiShyaami satya.nvadiShyaami tanmaamavatu tadvaktaaramavatu avatumaam avatuvaktaara.n
OM shaantiH shaantiH shaantiH
The meaning :
May Sun be blissful to us, may Varuna be blissful to us, may Aryaman be blissful to us. May Indra and Bruhaspati be blissful to us, may Vishnu be blissful to us. Salutation to Brahman, salutation to O Vayu. You only are the direct Brahman, I shall call you rightousness, I shall call you the truth. May he protect me, may he protect the teacher. Protect me, protect the teacher. OM !! Peace Peace Peace

Tomars of Belonwala(My maternal sir name) have been god fearing lot always and regular pujas to Kuldevta, gram devta and other deities were regular culminating in builiding up of family temple.Built by my nana in 1991 it stood grand(Picture as above with both my nana nani sitting proudly)

Labour of love gone to seed by 2000, puja was regular but structure was dangerously ruined, it cut a sorry picture truly:




Rebuilt by my mom and my Mausi(Alok's mom) in 2012, its a spanking new avatar last week my ma had 'Chandi path' there and you can see pandits all huddled together in doon chill :




Futuristic image of this temple in 2032 when god if orders me and Alok singh(My Cousin) for jirnodwar:


Amen!!!!!

It was there.....Than gone !!!

Alok may be you should have planned your new trip to India a bit earlier or for that matter maybe i should have gone to doon few days earlier maybe i could have still savored the Faluda Kulfi or Rasmalai of Kumar sweet shop, it was there and than was gone.As i entered the Chakrata road in evening driving down from Gurgaon( It was trip i was making last week to drop Joshita at Welhams after winter vacation and also to attend the reconstruction and aftermath Puja of our family temple in Belonwala) i thought for a moment maybe i had taking a wrong turn and reached Iraq and than i realised the bottleneck or chicken neck as Mayank is fond of saying the ever bane of doon traffic, the narrow lane near Kumar sweet shop and entire Chakrata road is wide again.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20111219/dplus.htm#1

Although this sweet shop is shifted still old nostalgia will hit doonies for time to come ,still its good for doon traffic henceforth.

Remembering 'Silk'- Rehashed version of earlier entry

I am re-releasing one of my earlier entry which came as ‘Sheela ki Jawani’, with ‘Dirty picture’ hitting the silver screen today and memories of ‘Silk Smitha’ ( I knew you all thurkis read as mammaries) revisited,I have made minor changes from earlier one trying to add few more details of the era :-

Rejogging the memory after seeing buxom Vidya Balan on posters of ‘Dirty Picture’ it went back to timeframe of 1988-1995 and this was the time when out of teens, unshackled by parents we were absorbing all things new like a curious child, together we friends tried the goodies which were on offer in our small town of Dehradun.
Alok,me and other pals although were inhibited by our middle class taboos but still had unrestricted hormones which were overflowing like a dam bursting at seams with overflowing ooze ready to submerge anything under its way,lack of outlets and strong morality usually meant for us ‘God helps those who help themselves’ or a putting in chaste hindi ‘Apna haath Jagan Nath’ but then born creatives as we were, without props it all seemed quite dull, having exhausted IIIrd grade hindi pulps, we moved to ‘anonymous’ authors in English(Mendi had full mine of it) simultaneously rare dekko @ ‘Hustler’ or rather spuriously printed rehashed versions generally found on pavements outside bus stands and railway stations prolonged the ecstatic creativity for weeks. Lack of much needed solitude and fiscal support meant VCPs and much used video cassettes was option exercised only at max annually but then it had its own issues which I plan to recap later on…………And than we stumbled upon art house Cinema morning shows of French, english movies which were devoured to derive the much needed roughage, our creativity peaked with ‘Sirroco’ an all time favorite of all the ‘frustates’ I have been tracking career of ‘ Mr Roman Polanski ’ since then.Again something was missing as desi appetite can only be whetted with Roti, dal, sambhar, rice, pickle similarly creativity needed much sought after Indianness to it and than we discovered ‘ Digvijay’ and ‘New Empire’ two cinema halls in our beloved Doon, Different permutation and combinations of words like ladki, Jawani,Kam,Pyaas,Junglee,Aag,Badan,jism,padosan,darinda did all the magic, December winters made for pitch dark entry on a 1800 hrs show for us in the cinema hall and here we also noticed aged males coming helmeted in the cinema hall and we understood meaning of repressions and frustrations of provincial India.2-3 minutes of add on reels were the highlight for which IVth grade 2.5 hrs Malyalam/Tamil movie had to be endured, stock characters of impotant householder, young mistress, buxom servant lady and lecherous politician speaking in offnote sound track made miserable with Vth grade dubbing,it was almost addictive as a gambling forcing us to waste on a meaningless venture repeatedly without anyone of us getting any better creative inputs.
Now years hence suddenly song ‘Chutki jo tune maari’ of ‘Dirty picture’ made me situp and recap the misadventures, I have noticed atleast one of the above mentioned cinema hall in Dehradun on my recent visit still exhibiting similar fare I am not sure in today’s age who could be the audience ….but for sure Silk Smitha will remain immortal in reams of reels in these kind of movies.

Recipe for Thopa

In late eighties, Gulati & I tried many different recipes to gain some weight and make our bodies a bit more attractive to the girls. Also, during these times, Sonu and Anil, all of a sudden starting gaining weight for unknown reasons, making me really curious( Dinu, of course, had no trouble gaining weight; he had trouble maintaining it and did a decent job of it). Turned out that they had been regularly visiting the Tibetan shanties near the local bus stand right next to the bhotiya market. Having been frustrated, I too decided to check out this place and joined them on one hot afternoon.

This was my first close encounter with Tibetan culture, the humble tibetan men, and the hot Tibetan girls. Sonu and Anil ordered Thopa and Mommo and ate them like animals while I struggled with the menu and also how I was gonna eat the meat as I had never eaten non-veg before. However, the 2 fatsos in front of me inspired me to the fullest and I took the plunge. After serious consideration I ordered Thopa as well. That was the love at first sight with Thopa and meat. I continued going back there every chance I got. I didn't gain a gram of weight -- while Sonu and Anil became Saands (bull) -- but picked up eating non-veg on the quest.

25 years later, however, when gaining weight is no longer a secret, I have finally decided to give up non-veg and get closer to my Jain roots, finding solace in compassion for other beings. Thopa and Momo became increasingly popular since then, slowly creeping out of the Tibetan territory and becoming mainstream. Now stalls are all over the city and the delicacies are being enjoyed by the masses.

Thopa Recipe: http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/YaBB.pl?num=1229042531

Learning ropes : My Nani's(P.B.U.H.) guide to making sun hemp rope

…………………Mahatma Gandhi strongly pleaded for decentralization of economic and political power through the organization of Village Panchayats. He was of the definite view that Panchayat system in India, if worked on scientific lines, could not only build up the social and economic strength of the countryside but also strengthen the forces of national defence against the risk of foreign invasion.He always wanted the villages to be a self sufficient units and enterprise such as below made it so


(Swarna bed in dusk and iron bridge on Swarna)

(Dry Swarna bed and Swarna in full aftermath of rains)

Place : Beautiful Swarna river near Belonwala :( 30°25’6”N 77°56’33”E)
Live Demonstration : A.D.1982 or so, it was time when Asiad happened and we shifted to Parkash nagar.
Participants : 1)Mighty Nani and 2)skinny me.
Raw material description :
Hemp is a versatile plant that has been cultivated for a variety of uses. Hemp fiber is known for its strength and natural resistance, hemp is most commonly used for making shoes, canvas, bags and rope.
Process Description:
- Dip the green branches of sun hemp during summers in the Swarna river bed during peak of summers when water remains a trickle.
- Secure them tightly by boulders and stones so they do not rush away during monsoon gut slought, This is to be secured as it is for 3-6 months till the time outer coating is pulped , rotten and ready to be peeled off with smallest of nudge.
- Take out the branches one fine summer afternoon with its warmth and before the sunlight starts fading and you start shivering under thin cotton dress you are wearing.
- With all your might and like a expert washer man beat continuously the pulpy, gooey outer coating on some nearby rock around the river bed till time sun fiber comes out all bright and shining.
- Separate the hemp fibers or unwind the hemp yarn and cut into lengths approximately twice as long as the desired length of the rope. Divide the bundle in two, holding half the fibers in your left hand and half the fibers in your right. Twist each bundle clockwise until the cord you are creating begins to kink and loop. Twist the two cords together, wrapping one over the other in a counterclockwise motion, to form a rope.

My Nani was one strong lady and as befalls all rural women apart from farm work most of all other chores were their domain and she made decent job of everything running the rural household efficiently, era was of saving and getting value out of last penny and thus old folks lived in Belonwala and other parts of India.They toiled so our future be made..hats off to them!!!

ATM blues

India got its first ATM when the HSBC introduced the concept in 1987.

I saw an ATM for first time in 1995, it was December in Mumbai landing at around 10 in night at VT now called as CST(I think it was called CST back than as well) straight from Lucknow with an address in hand looking for my Buddy Alok Jain although I had sent speed post in advance of my arrival date it’s a mystery still where that post went.Out of train Frantically I looked everywhere for Mr jain..not a trace of him.I summoned all the courage and went out of station. Irani restaurant on the front street was full of crowd doing brisk business ….being a simpleton I told the owner guy the predicament I was in and told him I was looking for no of Colaba YMCA,guy was point blank and told me it would cost INR 5/- extra and than pushed thick yellow directory in front of me..one full page of YMCA nos!!! , this was a coin propelled phone and I was able to connect to manager of YMCA Colaba, I was speaking english as if everyone in Mumbai breathed only that language(assumed fears of a small town guy) he guided me to a phone no of the hostel and lucky me that Mr Jain was somehow was in his room awake still and was called instantly , for first time I felt oxygen in my lungs.My saviour the Irani the eatery owner never took that 5 from me I feel indebted to him still.

Mr Jain was prompt in coming and out we went for night of adventure( would recap that in some later post or maybe Alok recaps that) but first Mr jain went into kiosk sort of the thing pulled out card and extracted money out of the metallic box.

I had seen working of first ATM in my life.

Rama Maam

Some of my finest memories come from my SGRR days. The school may have lost some reputation now, but in those days it used to be just fine. There were many a fine teachers, each one unique in their character. Their voices and faces are still stuck in my mind as if I saw them yesterday.

Even though Rama maam never took a class for me, or at least I don't remember she did, there was something about her that made me admire her. I think it was her strong personality. Middle aged, she had a habit of supari chewing. She always carried a reshmi supari pouch with her, the one thats round and has a string at the rim so you can pull and close it. I don't think I ever saw her empty mouthed. As soon as she finished, she would open her pouch and ate a small helping. Because of this her teeth had become tinted, and there was big gap between teeth as well. For some reason, she also always limped while walking. One of my distinct memories also is that she used to wear dark green sari always. Sticking out from the short blouse, her extremely fair flesh always shone on the sunny days making her even more attractive.

When a new principal was once hired at the school, he tried to bring about a few changes, one of them being each one of us would bring the news highlights from last night's news or from the morning newspaper and read them to the whole school during the morning prayer gathering. Also, for the prayers, it was decided to make it more musical. It turned out that Rama maam actually knew how to play harmonium. So, then every morning from then on we sung different prayers like itni shakti hame dena maata or ae maalik tere bande hum with her harmonium and her strong voice took prominence over all other voices. Of course once the prayer was over, she took supari from her pouch for a fresh helping and sooth her dried mouth from all the singing. Such was Rama maam.

Link to Jaya Bhaduri's video for a morning prayer session at school, singing hum ko man ki shakti dena: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbchuCfqBls&feature=related

Sheela Ki Jawani

Most of my memoirs generally restrict themselves to timeframe of 1988-1995 and there is reason to it this was the time when out of teens we were absorbing all things news like a curious child, together we friends tried the goodies which were on offer in our small town of Dehradun.

Alok,me and other pals although totally restricted by middle class taboos still had unrestricted hormones which had peculiar tendency of behaving like a dam bursting at seams with overflowing liquids ready to submerge anything under its way,lack of outlets and strong morality usually meant for us ‘God helps those who help themselves’ or a putting in chaste hindi ‘Apna haath Jagan Nath’ but then born creatives as we were, without props it all seemed quite dull, having exhausted IIIrd grade hindi pulps, we moved to ‘anonymous’ authors in English simultaneously rare dekko @ ‘Hustler’ or rather spuriously printed rehashed versions generally found on pavements outside bus stands and railway stations prolonged the ecstatic creativity for weeks. Lack of much needed solitude and fiscal support meant VCPs and much used video cassettes was option exercised only at max annually but then it had its own issues which I plan to recap later on…………And than we stumbled upon art house Cinema morning shows of French, Korean movies which were devoured to derive the much needed fodder, we peaked our creativity with ‘Sirroco’ all time favorite of all ‘frustates’ I have kept on tracking career of ‘Mr Roman Polanski’ since then.
Again something was missing as desi appetite can only be whetted with Roti, dal, sambhar, rice, pickle similarly creativity needed much sought after Indianness to it and than we discovered ‘ Digvijay’ and ‘New Empire’ two cinema halls in our beloved Doon, Different permutation and combinations of words like ‘ladki’, ‘Jawani’,’Kam’,’Pyaas’,’Junglee’,’Aag’,’Badan’,’jism’’padosan’,’darinda’ did the magic, December winters made for pitch dark entry on a 1800 hrs show for us in the cinema hall and than we started noticing aged males coming helmeted in the cinema hall and we understood meaning of repressions and frustrations of provincial India.2-3 minutes of add on reels were the highlight for which IVth grade 2.5 hrs Malyalam/Tamil movie had to be endured, stock characters of impotant householder, young mistress, buxom servant lady and lecherous politician speaking in offnote sound track made miserable with Vth grade dubbing,it was almost addictive as a gambling forcing us to waste on a meaningless venture repeatedly without anyone of us getting any better creative inputs.

Now years hence suddenly song ‘Sheela ki Jawani’ of ‘TMKhan’ made me situp and recap the misadventures, I have noticed atleast one of the above mentioned cinema hall in Dehradun on my rare visits still exhibiting similar fare I am not sure in today’s age who could be the audience!!!

A different off site @ Nainital 20 years back.

Look at the fashion trends of trendy small town guys , strutting about in MALL of Nainital in early ninties.

This was our first outing after continous ragging when we joined the Pant Univ and enjoyed the freedom..we did for sure!

Drinking Tibetan CHANG with MOMOs we painted the town red, staying atyouth hostel in upper Nainital..it was friendship at best.

Out of these 4 guys i occasionally meet Bist(One with thatch of hair we called him 'Thatchy') and onec in blue moon talk to Barthwal..rest two others Choudhary (smart one) and Brijwal(The pahari) are lost to me.

Netaji and doon

I was very small kid made smaller by my thin frame, even brother had not touched the teens, we owned an Atlas cycle which was the sole transportation of whole household and still dwelled at chhukhu mohalla and yet to to even think about Parkash nagar house and it was a Sunday bright and cool as ever that much I remember, pitaji took us on the cycle meanwhile Bansal’s from our neighbourhood joined us on his cycle he was accompanied by Anil his son who was prone to epilepsy attacks, both of these guys worked at AmritDhara a ayurvedic medicine factory adjoining Madhuban hotel.later I came to know outing was to pay tribute to some saint who had recently passed away at Ramakrishna mission near Jakhan, still I found it stange my only console was to discover new facets of doon which I wasn’t allowed so far.When we reached the spot, body was lying and I had seen a dead man for first time peculiarity was his nostrils were closed with cotton, we bowed father lifted me up to see clearly and I could notice baldness of the man..as we came out father told me conspiringly did you identify the man.. and than opened the secret..that was Netaji subhash Chandra bose!!!!!

(From Hindustan time archives) :-----
Did Subhas Chandra Bose spend his days as a sadhu in Cooch Behar and then die in Dehra Dun in 1977?
When Justice MK Mukherjee tabled his report in May on the disappearance of Bose, he had mentioned the Dehradun story as one of the five versions that gained currency about Bose’s life post 1945. A swami resembling Netaji had spent about 13 years in West Bengal’s Coochbehar district before arriving in Dehra Dun in 1973. He settled there and died in 1977.

The VCR Era

At 12 AM, sleep tried to take over completely, but a hot cup of tea got me going. At 3 AM, it was twilight zone; I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or dreaming. By 7 AM, the show was over and I was all set for the bed. If you are thinking that this is a routine for an exam preparation, you couldn’t be more wrong. This is the routine that was practiced in many Indian households back in the 80s when the VCR was at the peak of its existence. This was the generation that waited patiently for Saptahiki on Friday to catch a glimpse of the Sunday movie. Then on Sunday evening, all roads would become deserted and everybody got tuned in to Doordarshan by 6PM. The movies ran by Indian standard time back then which means they never started on time and many a times one had to patiently tolerate the ‘ghadi’ which was an image put up to tune up the setup of your TV before the beginning of the movie.

With the arrival of VCR, this generation was thrust into a new era all of a sudden. Colored TVs were commonplace by then (except for may be Rawat house who waited for the Jains to upgrade who in turn got inspired by the Gulatis) and so were the video shacks that made tons of money renting the video cassettes. For households that didn’t have colored TVs, these fellas also offered those for rent, so often times when you would order a bunch of movies, a technician would arrive with a TV, VCR, wires and the cassettes and set everything up in front of an eager crowd.
Old Mitsubishi VCR (Taken from -http://www.flickr.com/photos/rcadimensia/4155861813/)

Before ordering the movies, all near ones and dear ones were called and invited for the show and they would arrive on time with their blankets and all. The furniture in the living room would then be moved away and mattreses would be laid out so everybody could sit comfortably and sleep in the middle of the night if they had to. The show mostly started at around 7-8PM when uncles also had come back home from office and could join the party. Overusage of cassettes often resulted in bad tapes and most of the prints were ended up being watched with tracking lines in the middle of the screen or sometimes with shaky picture. A total of about 4-5 movies were watched during one session from 7PM to 7AM straight.

With the coming of the cable TV in the late 80s, this practice became outdated though, and gone were the days of one movie a week as telecasted by DD or 5 movies a night as seen on VCR. Now you have multiple movies running simultaneously 24 hours a day, but the appreciation is lost. Besides the social interacton and the pleasure of watching movies in a group with people making funny comments is no longer there.

Breakdown of USSR- Dehradun's loss!!

At the peak of Indo-Soviet friendship, the Indian market was full of cheap Russian — or rather Soviet — books. A lot of them were propaganda material but there were also many interesting science and a few science-fiction titles.
They were published by Mir Publishers, Mir Publishers did a good job and subsidised the education of an entire generation, published under a special programme "to make the best Soviet textbooks available for Indian students" these were really good, Seems the breakdown of the soviet union hit them hard, but they are alive still, I read somewhere thay survived by merging of different publications under the name MIR.
I remember, the narrow metteled road before ELLORAS turning left to a big compound(I have not been there for years), a shoping complex with all signs of socialistic era built by some entrepreneur without any frills, it was two storied and I think towards last was APTECH centre where Alok got enamoured with his course coordinator…. I forget the name!!! There was this hall at start of the building where a SARDARJI used to load over his treasure of Soviet published books, I was big time into espionage thrillers from USA of Ludlum and others and always had the feeling that this guy must be a KGB agent, that never came out actually but still it was fun to roam around , check glossy covered books much better in finish than Indian books and highly cost effective as well.
Alok and me bought ‘Learn russian’ audio books which seemed bargain at that time, I never ever opened it, it still lies somewhere in house at doon , but I did buy Fyodor dostovesky’s ‘IDIOT’. It became a craze later on to go through ‘Problems in General Physics, By I.E. Irodov’ while preparing for Engg exams.
The USSR is no more..Sardar ji never saw again..building must have improved with Shining India..yes its true that era is gone!!!.