THOSE WERE THE DAYS: MEMOIR

YE KAHAAN AA GAYE HUM

Today while listening songs from 90s, I ventured into the memories of my school days, which is of course golden time of my life. Those were the days when my father used to teach in the Government school and we used to live in small town of MP. Though there were very less facilities but still we were happy family of four.

Badoni town was surrounded with hills and almost every hill was having one iconic temple (still has). One side we had Mithiya-wale Hnumanji, other side 'Gopeshwar Mahadev'. Also there were four temples of Devi maa. Mornings used to happen with bhajan sound coming out of Budhe-baba temple. I am proud to say that we had all religion followers living so peacefully. There were several Masjids. World famous Jain temple 'Sonagiri' was just 3 km away. 

It was so pious environment all around. We used to celebrate all festivals with so much josh & fervor. People used to meet in Melas (gethering) which were most awaited events for all. These Melas were place for shopping, recreation and talent showing activities like wrestling competitions. 

Deewali-Holi, Janmashtami, Navaratri all were memorable celebrations. And can't forget delicious KHEER on Kartik Purnima in all the temples, for which we friends used to visit many of the temples in same evening.

Every year used to be excitement of going to new class, though there were same broken chairs in class and we used to manage with used books from senior class students. I remember all my teachers, ND Pathak, MV Singh, GP Gupta and even my father (great respect for all of them).

Music was my companion of my studies, whereas ‘Air FM’ was the music king. It was not possible for me to buy movie cassettes to listen to favourite songs. It will be hard to digest for my children that there were no CDs or MP3, at that time and Music used to come in cassettes. There used to be a tape recorder which used to play these cassettes. For one good song we had to buy a cassette of that movie having 6-10 songs and then keep listening that song by rewinding the tape.

I remember, Pitaji had bought a new cycle in our school days and that was nothing less than a car for us. I was entrusted to clean that every day, but not supposed to ride it. I used to get pocket money for these small-small jobs, and how much? 25 paise per day. That used to make my monthly saving around rupees 7.5, Wow.. huge amount at the end of the month. Endless happiness…

We the bunch of friends, used to play in old Haveli of Bundela kings called 'Rour'. Winning team used to win 1/- coin and that was really big money for me considering my monthly savings. Second Favorited game was “Gully-Danda”. We indeed used to spend lot of time in our village gullies and on roads. Not to miss kite catching in the evenings of summer holidays after exams which used to be official kite season in our area.

Different age group players used to go for playing cricket in various fields i.e. Bade taal, Khajua ka taal, Katkiya field. My father was also fond of matches and along with him we also developed interest for games. Weekends were absolutely booked for one or other activities.

My town had many old Haveli and Royal bathing place called ' Baoli' which were kind of water well having many stories below the surface. It was amazing experience to swim in these Baolis and many ponds of the town.

Topography of town was so beautiful that JP Dutta chose our town for shooting his hindi movie 'Yateem'. For months we used to go to see Bollywood stars like Sunny deol, Danny, Kulbhushan Kharbanda.

My apologies for not having any personal pic in this story as we did not have Mobiles to take pics 😅😅. Yashika camera and iconic Kodac Roll (if you can remember) were luxurious things those days.

Truly I miss you all my friends. Today I have Family, new friends, job, money, car, house and literally everything which anyone will look for but…

Those were the GOLDEN days of my life.