— Harshman Daniel
I belong to a different India. One that has myriad identities. A passing India, an India of strong joint families and an Indian mentality which was sown long before the 1991 reforms. My mom boasts of having nine siblings, and her father boasts of having had a central government job, which partly explains the small cricket team he had created in his own house.
I think there is a shift in the value system generations born post 1991 follow, something that gets reflected in many aspects of life, including our food habits. When it comes to my maternal grandmother, we are never supposed to waste food. But my sister (who now works in IT) doesn’t mind if I leave some food behind, because she doesn’t want me to force feed myself. Perhaps, this is the result of the relative affluence that we have acquired over the years. This affluence gave us more than reformed values. It gave us many other conveniences, which would soon turn into objects of joy.
The two most important purchases (in terms of conveniences) we made for us, for our house were the Fridge and the Washing Machine. The Onida TV in my house and my father’s bike are roughly my age, 25 years! And yet, they still work. These are not just the objects I grew up with, they are the ones I grew around with. Though we shifted 3 to 4 houses in the last 25 years, these things remain our constant and anchor us to the times gone by, to the beginnings. They have wormed their way into some of my fondest memories.
But the closest memories I cherish, are those of my times with my cousins. My cousins and I (12 of us in fact!) used to play in a street that looks like a street from Russia, where every house looks the same because they are government staff quarters. My mother’s father was regarded almost like a God, simply because he could read a newspaper and had studied till class 5. It was a time when the word ‘engineer’ carried an aura of reverence. But as becoming an engineer has become more common these days, that note of reverence has faded.
Reflecting back on those memories, brings forth to my mind several things at once. My cousin Bhanu, my younger brother and I used to be very excited about summers. Every summer, my cousin would come to my hometown Karimnagar where we used to play video games on TV, which brought us immense joy. That was a world of ignorance, an age of ignorance for all of us, where we thought that villains could exist only in video games and not in real life. My childhood friend Mrudula (I don’t know where she is now) and I used to play together with Vicky forgetting the world. My brother and I used to walk on walls, running past this gate of ours which gave us electric shock whenever it rains. Our house used to acquire the ‘vampire-house’ vibe whenever it rained.
I have also been reflecting on how modernity has brought significant improvements in our lives and how I lived through the years capturing this significant shift.
Growing up, we never had good libraries in my hometown. There is one district library, infamous for its pungent urine smell, which would greatly discourage anyone from going near it. Even then, it was frequented by ambitious men and women who were preparing for government jobs. It didn’t help that it was staffed with an angry and rude attendant, who asked everyone to sign in before entering.
There are several other instances of inefficiency and lack of accessibility littered across the pillars of our country’s governance. Yes, India is filled with broken systems, but I think there is hope regardless and that hope could sometimes come from technology. In a place like my hometown, which is a decent place to sit down and write with very few distractions as possible, there are no good libraries and bookstores. Thankfully in 2015, Flipkart came in and so did the original Amazon, both of which became routes for quality books to be brought toward this side of the world. In 2020 came my Dell Laptop – custom made. It brought the entire library to me, saving me the effort of going to the library every day.
—Edited by: Lakshmi Yazhini , Design by: Neenu Elza
Article 19 