Hating someone or something is a full time occupation and I really do not have that much time. All I can manage is an angry feeling now and then, an uncharitable thought once in a while, a bit of trouble falling asleep sometimes. More than that I honestly, seriously cannot afford.

Hating is a luxury that young people indulge in. They hate this, they hate that… they hate old movies, unbranded jeans, green vegetables, bananas, bhajans, exams( or maybe not exams, thanks to Kapil Sibal’s botching up of the education system!) They have the energy to hate and they have the confidence that their view point is the only right one.

When I was young I, too, hated a good many things. And I was pretty vocal about it. I hated the smell of cabbage cooking, I hated bad grammar, I hated the Mills and Boon kind of books, I hated people who made fun of South Indian languages, I hated washing clothes…….oh, there was a long list of things I hated.

But somewhere along the way crept in a washing machine, some experiences, some empathy, some sympathy, an epiphany or two. Having a very calm and balanced spouse also did its bit. Reading opened my mind to the realization that man is both unique and not at all so at the same time. Add to all this, my growing love and enjoyment of the place I live in, my circle of friends, the laughs we share; and as I inch my way past half a century I realize there’s no time to hate. There’s time to dislike of course. But more about that later. 

Whatever happened to wooden handled black cotton umbrellas that spelt father/grandfather and security, cycle repair shops, cobblers, cloth school bags, fountain pens, ink bottles with droppers, hair nets and U shaped hairpins, charts of leaders to cut out and stick in notebooks, watches that had to be wound up, wooden clothes pins, the black telephone with clackety numbers, sudden impromptu antaksharis, LP records and cassettes?

And the ‘pepsicola’-that sweet frozen ice in a polythene cylinder one could suck on the go- jeeragoli, unbranded potato wafers, green saunf bunches for 10 ps, the chikki seller outside the school, the fellow carrying a pole topped with a sticky mound of pink, white, green stuff that he pulled into fantastic shapes for the brave hearted to eat, Mangola, lemonade made with fresh lemons, home made aam papad……

So also Ambassador cars, wooden tops wound with multi coloured thread, marbles, fragrant pink roses, yellow and orange Camlin compass boxes, home made gum (atta cooked with water) for book labels that cockroaches ate up!, scented erasers with an alphabet on each(costly at 20 ps), Indrajal comics, movie tickets at Rs 1.60….

And what about coconut leaf fans, embroidering pillow covers on hot summer afternoons, copying down recipes in one’s best handwriting?

The ball of string in every home, growing bigger by the month as thread from grocery packets was carefully wound around it, the stash of pins/ clips/ chalk pieces that every grandmother hoarded, crocheted tray cloths and torans…the stories that all grandmothers seemed to know..

The happy pile bought in second hand book shops, Vividh Bharati with its Hawa Mahal and horde of ‘shrota’ from the musical sounding Jhumritalayya, TV that said good night at 11 pm, long letters to friends and pen-friends and family members and the time to write them in…when bed time was 10 pm and buying a 5 star bar meant a treat for the whole family..

Guess Nostalgia is here to stay.