Is the world changing too fast or is it just me! So much has changed in just over a decade. Remember the cassettes, the tapes getting stuck and how we would pull the tape out and roll them back with a pencil. The VCRs, the video parlours, rushing to the video parlour moment a new movie was released. Alas, online streaming has completely done away with that!

If I go down further, I can visualize the paper boats & planes, kites, marbles that we would so fondly hoard. I can still smell the letters – the postcards, the inland letters and the sometimes the ominous telegram. As a child I used to collect stamps, do kids do that anymore? The lazy vacation afternoons, pickles being cooked in the sun, homemade laddus and namkeens…

Change is inevitable, change (most of the times) is for good, but in the last decade, things have changed at a break-neck speed. Things that were so precious to us growing up have suddenly vanished. If you have grown up in the eighties you will probably know what I mean. We grew up in the pre-internet age, most people didn’t even have a telephone then and yet we were connected. Bonds were probably stronger then…

In our times’ television brought friends and families together (not every family had a TV). We would sit together and watch weekly serials or films on Doordarshan. The anchors and newsreaders of DD were celebs in their own right. Satellite television wiped out DD flooding our imagination with Saas Bahu soaps. TV became more personal and moved to the bedrooms and there was no community TV watching anymore.

Then came the internet and social media and smartphones that completely changed the game. Our smartphones have it all now – be it entertainment or social media or news or shopping or even snooping apps, and we spend hours staring at our phone screens. The world has become smaller now, everybody is connected to everybody through social media platforms or WhatsApp groups, but are we really connected?

While I am excited about the future – the possibility of travelling to Mars someday or having a Robot to do my household chores, I also want to hold on to a bit of my past!

If you feel the same do take some time to browse through this blog. You are also welcome to share your experiences. Leave your comment or share your blog post at sumana.bee@gmail.com