A grown-up’s pieces of reminiscence of his childhood

80s Born, 90s Grown

a telltale of the things I cherish in my adult age

We never remember days, only moments. — Cesare Pavese

Not too long ago, it was a fall season in Bangladesh and a summer time in North America. It was the time in between 1980 to 1989.

I saw the first light of my life, brought into the world in between my elder sister and my younger brother. Obviously, I can’t recall the earliest memories- because those were not molded and folded into meaningful scenes I could visualize. But I can assure one thing: probably the first light I saw was the electric light of the clinic room, as I was born inside the clinic. Sounds logical, right!

Almost the earliest recollection: Earliest memories are probably lurking around somewhere in my memory cells without any meaningful recollection or visualization. One event that I can barely recall was about the time when my younger brother was born. My grandmother took me to the clinic room, where my mom, dad and a baby I didn’t know-off were present. When I realized the unknown little devil was grabbing all the attention, I screamed-out and left the room crying. And from that moment till now, it’s a story that is often uttered to make fun of me (I was a kid and naturally jealous!!!).

Big flood of 1988: I could recollect the memory of the big flood of Bangladesh, happened in 1988. My father was in the Police force and availed a police house-quarter in the capital city, Dhaka. We shared the building with other families of the police members.

During that season, our house-quarters were flooded in the ground floor (we lived on the 5th floor, so no issues at that time). My sister used to make paper-boats and threw those from our balcony to the ground (covered with flood water) to see those floating. Sometimes I drew some artistic drawings (from a kid’s point-of view) on those crafts, sometimes I tried to made some boats by myself (99% of the time, the shapes were wrong).

Short exile in Grandparents house: As I was jealous of my brother’s presence in our house, I was sent to my maternal grandparents house for couple of months. It was completely a different place altogether. As a Music teacher, my grand-father used to teach and guide his students on classical music and signing choirs. Every morning, I woke up on the classical music tones and tunes. Although restricted to attend the choir, I always tried my luck to lurk behind other students — and measurably failed. My grandmother prepared meals for everyone, so that in the breaktime — students could have something to fuel their energy. Completely different than our own home, I enjoyed my time being there.

The dog-house experience: In the tin-shaded broad house of my grandparents, there lived another lovely creature — 5 dogs of Dev family. Each had different persona, distinct taste of choosing / liking people and of course had individual names. Boby was the elder one with anger issues, contrasting Jerry — a puppy afraid of strangers. Litu was the one named after one of our distant uncles, who used to mock all the dogs — so my grandfather gave it that name. Lucky was the proper one — decent, well-behaved, barked only when strangers came and mingled when strangers became friends. Lastly, Lily (one of the 3 dogs with the name ‘Lily’ in our grandparents’ house) was the one famous for sitting in his special sofa and watching TV shows all day long. My grandparents’ house was famous in the local area for different reasons and ‘being the protector of 5 dogs’ was one of them. Which dog was our favourite? — Litu. He used to play with us when we played football or cricket, was an active participant in our hide and seek game and the last one among those 5 to leave the world.

The experimentation phase: One of the known adages in our country is: the restless, relentless and louder kids in their childhood becomes decent, well-behaved and gentle in their adult age. Although I have all these mentioned qualities of the adult age, I’m not claiming that I was the force of nature or thunderstorm of the house during my kid-days. I used to do a bit of experimentation though! Like, how it would look like from the 5th floor balcony, if I throw a bottle of cream-on the empty street (is it going to splash!) or what would happen to the sound of the radio, if I urinate on the speaker while its playing a song? If I mix white color in white milk, is it going to be whiter? I surely complicated things for my parents in my childhood times.

First friends of life: As my father was a Government employee, working in Police Force — he had to change his workstations in every two years from one location to another. For us kids, it meant to have new schools in every two years, new friends and adapting to the new place. Once I got accustomed with the places, the remaining years were there to explore. The painful part though was to leave every place once it became familiar and to leave the friends for life. 6 schools, countless friends and loads of familiar places I had to leave behind — which I cherish and wish to revisit time to time.

I forgot how my school journey, but I can recall that a room full of strangers engaging in groups, while I was struggling to cope-up with the concept of coming to this very room everyday. It was a struggling time for me at first, but afterwards — I enjoyed my time, as I met with my first friends of my life. I became aware of this interesting concept called ‘tiffin time’, which was basically the meal-break time and the school provided us standard meal-items (dry foods, biscuits, dry sweet items etc.). I loved it! Along with that, my first school brought first of many things, like first annual sports event, first school picnic, first winter long vacation — aha!

Fun time and meaningless gossips!: Football was our favourite sport back then. You didn’t need to have a number of accessories to play that, just a regular football (kid’s version, shorter) and any place to hustle with it. After the school, I used to run towards my home and within quick minutes, I was running back again — this time, to the field. As the players were the same, we divided our teams through different methods. After the games, with our sweaty dresses, we used to lie down and look at the vast blue sky, with or without the clouds roaming. Our stories were innocent, probably meaningless and not realistic-but those were endless from day to day.

Long awaited family gatherings: In the country like Bangladesh, where different settlers came in, won decisive battles and settled with their unique culture and religion, our culture was shaped through cultural & religious and norms embedment — which made it diverse in norms and celebrations. As a Bengali Hindu family, we used to celebrate different religious festivals, specially the Durga Puja (an annual Hindu festival originating in the Indian subcontinent which reveres and pays homage to the Hindu goddess, Durga).

The festival continued for 4 days, so in order to visit both my grandparents in two different locations, my parents always scheduled the vacations in two parts. We used to visit my maternal grandparents for the first two days and the last two days were for the paternal grandparents. Sweets, street foods, colorful programs, joy-rides in Kids Park, Zoo visit, the gathering of my father’s and mother’s siblings and cousins family — it used to be a crowded festival for us. My parents always gifted us story books, which also took a part of the days to read. And all had unofficial corners in the house to enjoy — the seniors had their corner, the adults had their corner and the kids also had their corner. We were only called, when it was time for food or outing or for bed. So vivid, so carefree times!

Our TV entertainments: Apart from the radio (which was popular amongst the seniors), television was one of the important part of our childhood. We used to watch so many amazing cartoons, like — Tom and Jerry, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, He-man, Mena, Woody Woodpecker, Duck Tales, (favourite cartoons like ‘the Simpsons’, ‘Rugrats’, ‘Dexter’s Laboratory’, ‘Tiny Toon Adventures’ etc. were not available in Bangladesh that time). Along with the domestic television programs and drama serials, we were fond of English serials, like: MacGyver, The Girl from Tomorrow, Time Trax, The Three Stooges,the Adventures of Sinbad, Spellbinder, RoboCop, Perfect Strangers and other serials from neighbourhood countries, broadcasted in our national television (few notable names were The Sword of Tipu Sultan, Alif Laila, Oshin etc.). Friday was the official weekend in Bangladesh (now it’s Friday and Saturday) and if anyone went outside around 2.45 pm in Friday for any chores, they could barely see anyone outside — because it was Friday movie special and everyone was spellbound for that time being. My mother used to prepare special foods and curries on every weekend and we all were in-front of the TV set, just after the lunch time to watch the movie together. In some other nights in the week, we used to watch domestic drama serials as a family together and I can still recall that if anyone came or knocked our door during any session, we had rotation amongst our brothers and sister to attend the door with a disappointed face.

Couple of interesting things, that popped up: There were so many things we (80s-90s kids) used to do in Bangladesh that the kids are not doing now and it is realistic as everything changes and evolves. I’m just surprised to see that changes gradually came and embedded and we didn’t even realize when it happened. Time is a tricky monster!

By the way, when I look-back to find what we did that time, a number of interesting things comes up:

· Recording of songs were an exclusive thing, as you could record 10–12 songs on both side of the cassettes, which could be played in record-players or transistors

· Rented movies from ‘Video Tape Stores’ for the movies and serials once in every week.

· One ice-cream per day was permitted for each one of us and any other outside food was not permissible (so, I didn’t take any permission before taking any street food)

· Kids used to collect player cards in their sports magazine (self-made collection), so me and my brother used to have large boxes of Pepsi player cards

· Yo-Yo was a game that came out as a storm in Bangladesh and I used to have two big ones (as I damaged the first one)

20 years passed by. I have grown from a kid to Adult personnel and my parents are reaching towards senior ages. The world has turned ups and downs during this time and so are we.

What I miss from those days?

Probably the carefree life (except the study time), family time and associated memories. I had the chance to revisit most of the childhood places afterwards and yes, some of the places were not that vivid anymore. Time and experience changes you and your perspective anyway. That big field in front of my first school didn’t look that big anymore, the sweets from the childhood favourite store tasted awful when I had it last time and today, you can have thousands of songs saved in your phone or readily accessible subscription to listen to music (which supersedes cassette recording for sure).

But sometimes you need to look back and have the reminiscence; not for the sake of cherishing but to realize that for a carefree life, you don’t need much. Memories show us the most important elements of our life (family, feelings, connection etc.) and remind us to take care of those elements.

To be able to look back upon one’s life in satisfaction, is to live twice. — Khalil Gibran.

I hope that my childhood notes can remind your own sweet stories and can revive the realization towards a more carefree life.

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