WHAT GOES UP, HAS TO COME DOWN














Pic.: Indu Varier


1977. I was still not out of college, then. Mrs. Indira Gandhi was a Durga then, and her Congress was the Nazi, all powerful. The USSR was something the US and her allies’ feared about… They called it the ‘Iron Curtain’, the ‘Evil Empire'… There was NATO to deal with SATO.

'Made in USA' meant pride, a huge thing… Japan was still standing outside the door… and, 'Made in China', no one thought, would, one day, mean ‘sell-all-over-the-world’, and ‘even-a-beggar-can-afford’! IBM was a Polestar; Mohammad Ali was the ‘Greatest’… West Indies and Clive Lloyd still ruled Cricket, Brazil and Pele, football!

There was a despot called Idi Amin, who ruled a country called Uganda…They say, he was so mean, so heartless, that he ate human flesh for his breakfast!...

All that I heard of Reliance, then, was an ad which said, ‘Only VIMAL’… I don’t hear about VIMAL anymore. Reliance is everywhere, but!

Was Kejriwal born, then? I don’t know… But, I know, BJP wasn’t… There was the formidable Jan Sangh, but. Baba Saheb’s ‘Tiger’ had just come out of the cage, and the Gujaratis and South Indians were scared, here, in Bombay… (I am still scared to call it ‘Bombay’!)

Amitabh Bachchan had just landed, here, in search of bread… and, a ‘Mr. Nobody from Nowhere’, then… Rajesh Khanna, ‘Kaka’, was a ‘Super, duper Star’… Millions of ladies would die for him!

For us, the Indians, a car meant Ambassador or Premier Padmini. A two-wheeler meant a Bullet, a Jawa or a Yezdi. A steel cupboard meant, Godrej… We had to wait for months and months to bring home one, even if we had cash!

Indian Express meant power. TV meant a select few owning a big B & W box; radio was fun; LP records and gramophones would excite endlessly… Sholay was just a two-year-old baby, the ‘Cow-boy movies were a rage… The Beatles and Elvis fever was fast fading… Michael Jackson was a curly-haired black boy who sang with his siblings, that’s all!

Maharishi Mahesh and his TM, Swami Pabhupadha and his ISCON ruled the Indian spiritual-space in the West; Rajnish was just making his ashram here in old Poona… A Sri, Sri, Sri or a Baba Ramdev or an Asharam Bapu, none of them, were there around… Yes, Sai of Puttaparthi was there in his stronghold…

Everything has changed since 1977… The news, the sports, the roads, buildings and bridges, the phones, computers and cars… the books, cassettes, CDs and reading, music or movie experiences…

The way we romance and marry, the way we conceive our babies or raise them and educate them… the way we pray and the way we plan for our future… and, above all, the way we make money, the way we view ‘success’…

Yes, everything has changed since 1977…


By the way, why have I chosen 1977?

Just that I hear Apple Corporation – the company founded by my idol, Steve Jobs – has become the richest company in the world… crossing some 710-billion US-dollars in market value! I don’t know what that means… But, I know this: that nobody can count the apples in a seed, even though one can count the seeds in an apple… That, it was an apple that Satan tempted Adam and Eve to eat and, thereby, invite trouble into their - and their children’s - lives… That, it was Newton who first saw the apple falling from a tree and had jumped to the conclusion:

“WHAT GOES UP, COMES DOWN!”

1977. My head had pich-black beautiful curly-hair. The skin had no wrinkles… and, I did not know what a heart or a kidney did in my body…

Just that…


GERALD D’CUNHA



Comments

Veena Shukla said…
Beautiful! Like poem!
February 16, 2015 at 4:01 PM
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