You know you grew up in India in the 90s when….

Got this as a forward from a friend today, and there are loads of points in it, that does take you back to the ‘growing-up days’. Red‘s are my comments/views/experiences….

“You know you grew up in India in the 90s when….” is a group in facebook. And it is hilarious! Everyone of us should be able to relate to more than one of these!!! Have fun! 🙂

1) You know the words to ‘In-pin-safety-pin’ and ‘akkad-bakkad’ by heart :
For kolkata chaps, you have to akir-mikier-chaam-chikir’ 🙂
2) Cricket is almost a religion for you, and you idolize at least one of Kapil Dev/Rahul Dravid/Sachin Tendulkar/Saurav Ganguly
Come on Dravid
3) You have read at least some Chacha Chaudhary or Tinkle comics
Still do! Got to ask the Indian store owner if he can get Tinkle here
4) You’ve watched Shaktimaan on TV at least once in your life. And you can immediately recognize the character when you see him.
I can recognize him, but I have not watched even a single episode of it. (And, it is not too bad a costume for haloween is it?)
5) You have some ‘NRI’ relatives.
Hoping that I do not become one for my relatives
6) You couldn’t wait for it to be December so you could have the Toblerone chocolates your NRI relatives brought you
Missed that
7) You watched Cartoon Network, and then the late night movies on TNT that came after Cartoon Network ended.
Scooby-Dooby do, yabba dabba doo, zoykes…..
8) You watched corny dubbed versions of Small Wonder, Silver Spoon, and I Dream of Jeanie
Sony TV/Star TV rocks….school used to start at 11:30, and the daily schedule was Silver Spoons/ Who is the Boss/ Bewitched/ Richie Rich (on Cartoon network) before going to school and Small Wonder in the evening
9) You were THRILLED when McDonald’s opened in your neighborhood (or even eight kilometers away)
Surprisingly, the first time I went to McD, was in Mumbai, March 2006
10) Your first burgers were at Wimpy’s or Nirula’s.
N/A
11) A visit to Pizza Hut used to mean a special treat
I still get treats in Pizza Hut.
12) You have seen Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun at least 5 times each
Yes!!!
13) You still remember the theme song to Hum Paanch.
No, but reminds me of the awesome TV programing of Door-darshan, with Tu-Tu-Main-Main, Dekh bhai dekh, zabaan sambhal ke, shriman shrimati, marshall, kanoon, tehkikaat, ajnabee
14) You have played hours upon hour of Pukdam-pakdai, oonch-neech, kho-kho,’Doctor,doctor, help us!’, ‘Lock and key’
Countless hours!
15) You have played ‘Uma Joshi’ more times than you can remember.
who is Uma Joshi?
16) Dog ‘in’ the bone was your favorite co-ed game.
It is an interesting game
17) Much of your free time in school was spent playing UNO.
Reminds me of the train trip from Bombay to Kolkata, when the train got 24 hours late, and all the time was spent playing ‘UNO’ and the memory game with co-passengers.
18) You collected trump cards of wrestlers, cricketers, and airplanes, and did not quite understand why your younger siblings were obsessed with Pokemon and the other Japanese trends that followed.
Yes! Hulk Hogan had 1st rank, and Yokozuna had the largest chest size. What is the pokemon?
19) Your summer vacations were often synonymous with visiting your grandparents
Got to refer you to this
20) Your parents, at some point, told you ‘Dark Room’ was a bad game to play. But you still loved playing it.
Why was it a bad gam?
21) Bole mere lips, I love uncle Chips!
yummy! but amma never used to let us have them when we wanted it. Always used to refuse buying it. (we = me and my sister)
22) You know the song ‘Made in India’ by Alisha Chinoi
That song was a craze
23) You have seen many many many episodes of ‘Antakshri’ on Zee TV and know the only thing constant in the show is Anu Kapoor.
He still is! Only that he has migrated from zee to star
24) Amy evenings have been spent watching little kids gyrate vulgarly on Boogie Woogie on Sony.
Boo-
25) You were the coolest thing in class if you had a computer in your house while it was still the 90s.
Oh! remember the night-outs at our place playing Cricket-97 (or some thing like that) and Dink Smallwood
26) You learnt LOGO in school!
and I made Titanic using it
27) You couldn’t wait to start 4th/6th standard so you could start writing with PENS instead of with pencils!
So very true! It was 4th standard for me, and I was like the BIG boy then….and often made my sister cry because she was still with pencils
28) You often you terms and phrases like ‘kutti’, ‘abba’, ‘same to you, back to you, with no returns’, and ‘shame shame, puppy shame, all the donkeys know your name.’
and a lot more
29) You most probably saw Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge at the cinema at least once. You also fantasized singing songs in mustard fields like in the movie.
Reminds me however of third year in college, when Anshu and I revised the movie so so many times
30) You have seen David Dhawan and Govinda movies and laughed at them.
My favourite is Deewana-Mastana! It was riot, but may be because we went to the movie as a gang of 10-12
31) You have said ‘haw’ or ‘haw ji ki pwji’ when you saw people kissing in English movies
or tried to watch ’15+” english movies on star plus by pretending to watch golf/EPL etc
31) You have seen Titanic at least 12 times.
First time itself was a pain
32) You thought seeing English movies and speaking English made you the coolest thing ever.
There are people who still think that 🙂
33) You remember the Orissa cyclone, even though you didn’t know what a cyclone was.
I remember the days leading up to the cyclone. There was a slight effect of it in Kolkata. And, I really felt the lull before the storm. Also, remember traveling through Orissa, a few months after the cyclone, but still being able to spot its ravage.
34) You remember the Gujarat earthquake very clearly and could possibly tell everyone EXACTLY what you were ding when the earthquake occurred.
I remember another earthquake in Latur.
35) Barbies for girls, and GI Joes for boys were the ultimate status symbols. You just wanted more more more and more. And how can I forget Hot Wheels, for both boys and girls?
I had a few hot-wheels. Never collected them though
36) You have worn Osh-Kosh B’gosh and United Colours of Benetton clothes while growing up. And you thought ‘imported’ clothes were definitely way better than ‘made in India’ clothes (never mind that a lot of clothes brought from overseas by NRI relatives were actually made in India, before ‘Made in China’ started appearing on EVERY existing thing)
I had a favorite Singapore T-shirt
37) You know the words to ‘Posham Paa’, and like it better than ‘Oranges and Lemons’ even though you’d sing the latter to sound cool (see 32 above).
I only remember Oranges and Lemons
38) At some point or other, cool was your favourite, and therefore, most overused word.
Cool
39) Captain Planet was your first introduction to environmental consciousness.
That was super smart of Cartoon Network people eh!
40) You have tried to convince people around you to not burst crackers on Diwali, and then gone straight back home and burst them yourself.
Diwali without crackers ain’t diwali
41) You have had endless packets of Parle Gluco G biscuits, and of Brittania Little Hearts biscuits.
42) You loved licking off the cream from the centre of Bourbon biscuits.
And the cheap cream biscuits too from the corner shop
43) There were no Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma- Bata and Liberty was the way to go for your sports shoes.
They are still good, I think
44) You have probably consumed more Frooti in your lifetime than there is oil in Iraq.
or Rasna or Gold-Spot
45) You watched Baywatch on Star World even though (or because) your parents said you shouldn’t watch it.
Never liked it, but ya! have watched it. There however, used to be a time on star movies, where much ‘better’ things than baywatch used to air.
46) You bought packets of potato chips for the specific purpose of collecting Tazoa. And you had Tazos depicting everyone from Confucius to Daffy Duck to Daffy Duck dressed as Confucius.
Do not remember this, but do remember collecting Cricket Stars cards. Sachin was a rarity in those.
47) For the longest time, the Maruti 800, the Premier Padmini, THE Fiat, and THE Ambassador were the only cars you saw on the road, and the Contessa was cool because it was bigger.
Yup! I always pestered appa to get the Contessa because it was so cooool
48) You would literally jump up in excitement if you ever chanced upon an imported car (Oh my gosh, is that really a MERCEDES?)!
You still say gosh! it is a mercedes
49) You spent a good part of 1998 drooling over the Hyundai Santro and the Daewoo Matiz , debating which one was better.
50) You used to chew Big (big) Babool and/or Boom Boom Boomer chewing gum. They were bright pink and disgusting tasting, but you loved them for the temporary tattoos.
Ya! Chewing gum was considered cool too
51) Talking of temporary tattoos, you sometimes had contests with your classmates about who had more tattoos on their arm, leg, knee, hand, forehead, wherever.
Nah!
52) You thought Mario and Tetris were the coolest things ever invented, especially if you were a boy.
Mario is the coolest TV game ever. period.
53) You knew that having the latest Hero or Atlas bicycle would make you the coolest kid on the block.
Oh! to have MTB cycle, with those extra little horn like things on the handlebar. That was the fad. I sulled for many days because my cycle did not have that
54) You can imitate Sushmita Sen’s winning gasp to perfection.
Nah!
55) You have, at some point of time, worn GAP clothes (real or fake) like SRK in KKHH.
or the chain with ‘cool’ spelled out on it.
56) Seemingly senseless acronyms like SRK, DDLJ, KKHH actually make sense to you.
57) You have at some point debated who was more beautiful- Aishwarya or Sushmita.
58) If you lived in Delhi, you went bowling at Essex Farms, or Go-Karting at 32nd Milestone and couldn’t think how you could get any cooler than that.
Looks like the writer has drifted into early 2000’s. The coolest thing in Calcutta, 1997-99 was 3rd Agenda gaming parlor and one more next to Lighthouse cinema, and the ice cream parlor scoop next to Lighthouse.
59) Baskin Robbins ice-cream was THE thing to have!
60) You know what Campa Cola is. And you also knew that Coca Cola was THE drink.
61) When you would watch WWF keenly every evening/afternoon and really think that Undertaker had 7 lives and he made an “actual” appearance in the Akshay Kumar- starrer Khiladiyon ka Khiladi.
They really had us fooled
62) When all backpacks (or ‘schoolbags’) and water bottles and tiffin boxes had strange cartoon characters that were hybrid versions of seven or eight different characters, and you still bought them, because a green man wih a water pistol, boots, a jet-pack, Johnny bravo hair, a rajasthani mustache, gloves, and underwear (long johns) over his pants, called ‘Mr. X’ was OBVIOUSLY a status symbol.
63) You remember the Nirma tikia jingle.
Washing powder nirma, doodh se safedi….
also char boondon waala ujaala
64) You remember the Nirma girl.
65) You remember the ‘doodh doodh’ ad and also the ‘roz khao andey’ ads.
Doodh-Doodh to me is the best TV-ad I have seen
66) You grew up reading, if you read at all, some or all of Nancy Drews, Enid Blyton books, Hardy Boys, Babysitters Club, Animorphs, Sweet Valley series, Judy Blumes, and Tintin, or Archie comics. Because naturally, reading foreign authors made you much coller than reading Tinkle.
Love Archies, but Tinkle rocks!!!!!
67) Towards the late 90s (1998-99) at least some of us started our Harry Potter obsessions!
68) You absolutely HAD to go to Essel World if you wnet to Mumbai! “Essel World mein rahoonga main, ghar nahin nahin jaaonga main!”
For people who grew up in Calcutta, it was Nicco Park.
69) You watched the Bournvita Quiz contest on TV pretty religiously. The smarter ones amongst you actually took part in it and had your entire school and your entire extended families watch you on it!
Everyone saw BQC
70) “Jungle jungle baat chali hai, pata chala hai. Chaddi pehen ke phool khila hai, phool khila!”
90s Classic! Yay for Rudyard Kipling and Doordarshan adaptations!
Sundays had to have mowgli.