Yesteryear

25th April 2025

My 10-year-old frequently asks me, "Mumma, how was it when you were a school-going girl? What did you do on weekends?", and similar questions.
And it is such hard-hitting nostalgia. This is what they might have thought when they invented the term "Generation Gap."
The last conversation we had went something like this:
"Mumma, what would you do for entertainment?"
"We would watch TV only for one hour on weekdays and a movie (whichever streamed, not of our choice!)"
"That's it? And cartoons?"
"We did not have a cable connection. We only had Doordarshan."
"Door... What?"
"That's a free-to-air channel run by the government."



"Oh. Ok. And what about weekends? How did you spend the weekend? Did you go to the mall? Order food from outside? What did.."
"Wait. The only chutti we had was on Sunday. We did not go to malls, because there weren't any. We did not order food or go to restaurants. Mummy or Ma used to cook special meals for us on Sundays."
"And Fridays and Saturdays?"
"They were normal weekdays."
"Are you serious? About malls I understand. But why no ordering or dining out? Nanu was poor?"
"Shut up! That was the lifestyle that we had. It's not about being poor or rich."
He understood I was angry, quite visible. So the conversation stopped there. Later, I politely explained to him.

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