The heritage of Kaipeng

The journey of life can be divided into predominantly three phases: the past, the present n the future…err…hmmmm….…I had succumbed to the gods of boredom and my stagnant brain was unable to dish out the appropriate words…so I will stick to the phases as mentioned before. The past, the good old school days were a different era altogether for me, a life sans the technological marvels that has invaded our lives in the past couple of years. I guess even my parents and people from that generation would have felt the same way. The childhood days are so different for each of these generations which is why I chose to reminiscence my school days (also inspired by a mail forwarded to me) lest I forget how they were like, ten years down the line.

Those were the days …

- when the day after a long vacation was looked forward to, since that meant I got to wear an entire new set of clothes, shoes and a school bag.

- when I was excited about the new term ,new class, new books..

- when the left over pages from the previous years notebooks were used for rough work or patched together to form a new ‘copy’.

- when I diligently covered my text books with brown cover paper.

- when Chandamama, chacha chaudhuri, tintin, hardy boys series were the books we exchanged among friends

- when I was crazy about collecting stamps and movie postcards, which came with a particular bubble gum sold in one of the shanties right in front of our school

- when I used to wait for the ‘once in two years’ opportunity to go to kerala during summer vacations.I used to savor the rice sambar etc served in the train.

- when we used to get ten gol guppa’s ( or poochkas ) for just one rupee !!! (I guess now its three pieces for two bucks.)

- when buying an ice cream from the thelewaala meant a lot of cajoling and doing things right ( completing the homework on time etc)

- when writing with fountain pens was the norm (apparently that is to improve our handwriting…well huh…I don’t think ball point pens would have made it worse) which would invariably lead to nice lil ink patterns of various colors (blue,black,red) on my clothes

- when choosing between Chelpauk and Camel ink boiled down to the price tag attached.

- when the blue inland envelopes formed the only means of communication..(telephone was a luxury for the bourgeois for most part of my school days..)

- when there was only one TV in my neighborhood and we didn’t even have a proper TV transmission tower in my town ( it was not until 1988 that we welcomed the idiot box and a TV transmission tower was set up in Balasore)

- when I looked forward to the Wednesdays for the Chitrahar, often completing my studies well before that, when Fridays and Sundays were reserved for the movies, mythological serials and cartoon shows….glued to He man & the masters of the universe, Indradhanush, Stone boy, Street hawk, Circus,Fauji,Rajni,Rangoli and a slew of other serials in the age of Doordarshan…

- when the only English fare on Doordarshan was ‘Yes minister’ ( never missed an episode )…would love to watch it again.

- when the likes of Byomkesh Bakshi and Mungerilal captured my imaginations

- when I never missed an episode of Sidharth Basu’s quiz programmes

- when the distinctive tune of Doordarshan ( and the logo) wafted across the neighbourhood as they started their afternoon and evening ‘karyakrams’.

- when the rains meant making paper boats and playing with it in the water pool formed in front of our house

- when November, December and January was meant for kite flying and a game of badminton

- when the first video game I played was a Sanyo box borrowed from a friend

- when I eagerly waited for the computer ‘period’ in school ( for the DOS games) and the way I struggled writing the first lines in BASIC

10 PRINT ‘hello’

20 END

(hope I got it right). I was simply in awe of these tiny machines that it took me a while to figure out how these tiny boxes interpreted what we wanted it do

- when annual school function, exhibitions and sports meets meant a couple of holidays and excitement all around

I wonder what the kids of today would have to write about their school days in this age of internet, playstations, cell phones, and cable TV.

written by admin \\ tags: evolution, life, technology

After the success of Baby One More Time in 1999, she was declared “the Reigning Princess of Pop”. And after the back to back success of “Baby One…” and “Oops… I Did It Again” is was clear that she was the hire of the legendary Madonna. 

After the successful launch of her third album “Britney” she got a lot of movie offers. Film didn’t click just the way music did, with her debut film Crossroads being received poorly. She even received the Razzie Awards for worst actress. 

But what marks her greatest high in her career is Forbes magazine ranking Britney as the world’s most powerful celebrity in 2002. 

With “In the Zone” (her fourth album) topping the charts, she had made a new record of being the first female artist to have all her albums at Number One.

After “In the Zone” Britney went through a lot of struggle in her personal life - marriages, divorce, babies etc. She took to releasing compilation albums with her hits.

During 2007, after a long break, she released her fifth album “Blackout” which was well received and it reached the number two spot in the charts. This was also due to the fact that it was elaked on the internet before its launch. She had finally transcended from being a teenage tart music artist to a sexually powerful woman. 

This September she announced the title of her 6th album ‘Circus’. The world waits in baited breath for December 2, 2008, Britney’s birthday and the release date of the album.

written by admin \\ tags: Britney Spears, evolution, Music