Nostalgic Tales

Rulers and Rubbers: A Stationery-Laden Childhood Natraj honed our tools, sketched our dreams and erased our mistakes. Camel carried our stuff and painted our little worlds. These are not mere brands for us, but a box containing memories of our innocent childhood. Last week I was at a stationery shop when I saw colourful erasers of different shapes. “Did you own any of these rubbers in school?” I asked my friend. “Nopes!” he answered. “Neither me,” I said. “I used the Natraj rubbers.” Those were the erasers we used in our early days — with their orange-yellow films that we preserved as long as we could, just to hold on to that "new" feeling. And Natraj pencil sharpeners ? We raced them like toy cars. A new Natraj pencil with golden tattoos on its black back brought us joy. Collecting the wooden petals after sharpening? Felt artistic! I looked through the transparent display at the shop, and noticed — most items were now from Doms . Their packaging is flashy and co...

Doga was our Deadpool . Super Commando Dhruv? Captain America, may be.  We had our own superhero universe — long before we knew what a cinematic universe even meant. The Day I Met Doga I first saw Doga at my best friend’s house. That comic book instantly clicked with me. A foul-mouthed, rogue superhero with a muscular physique, a dog-like mask (which I honestly thought was his real face at first), and a full-blown gun arsenal — it was the first of its kind I had ever seen. He could talk to dogs. He didn’t take orders from anyone. And he always fought back. That wild, raw spirit appealed to my emotions deeply. When I got my own copy of Doga, there was no limit to my excitement. As soon as I got home, I devoured it — every panel, every letter, every drop of ink. It may have been the first book I ever completed reading — cover to cover. Enter: The Raj Comics Universe On the back cover, and even inside, I saw teasers — a whole universe of superheroes! Raj Comics ...

I remembered those old days when I used to prepare for exams. Because I recently appeared for one. I know I owe you an apology for being absent from Nostalgic Tales for a while — so please accept it! First Exam Was a Terrible Experience In Nursery, exams were mostly oral. We might have written some letters, words, and numbers, but that was it. Even in KG, we answered questions directly on the paper. So when I appeared for my first real exam in Standard I, I wrote all my answers right on the question paper itself. I still don’t know where I missed the instructions, and I’m not sure how the invigilators didn’t catch it sooner. Time was almost up when my uncle — who was on exam duty — came down my row to collect copies. Seeing me handing over the question paper, he froze, torn between panic and disbelief. He asked me to copy everything down on the answer sheet, and I started copying my answers at lightning speed. I’m not sure I finished, but it was enough to pass. That first e...

“We were excited without a clue we were standing at the beginning of a revolution.” I was in sixth standard when we got our first computer lab at school. We removed our shoes outside the lab without knowing that one day, we’d be stepping into a portal that would change the world. Back then, I thought the virus people warned about was the same one that gave me a cold. It didn’t take long to realize I was more serious about the computer’s health than my own. My best friend was the first among us to get a PC at home. That’s where I first heard The Summer of ‘69 . He also played Aap Ki Kashish . We didn’t know it then, but those speakers were ushering us into the age of digital intimacy. Logging On, Growing Up By the time I reached 11th standard, I had moved to Jharkhand. And yes, the computer lab became my go-to spot for impressing girls. That’s when I created my first Yahoo account and signed up for Orkut . Believe it or not—I still have access to that Yahoo inbox. I j...

Our first phone wasn’t really ours. It sat in a box—switched off, admired, and returned like a sacred relic. My father received a gift—an old Vodafone cell phone. But we were living in a village, and couldn’t afford a network provider. So he preserved the phone carefully in a box. On some evenings, he’d take it out, turn it on, feel it in his hands, and put it back. Just for the experience. It was around 2001 or 2002. By 2004, things had changed. Mobile phones started moving into every family. Nokia was a huge part of that revolution. But we still didn’t have our own number. Whenever I needed to call someone, I’d use the phone at a shop right across from our house. I had memorized their landline number—along with my best friend’s and my school’s. Our first actual phone was a black Nokia 1600, with an Airtel SIM. I had moved to Ranchi by then. During one visit home, I convinced my mom to let me take the phone back with me. Was it third-hand? Fourth? Who knows. It worked. ...

A conversation about smart fridges led us down memory lane—into Doordarshan days, superhero capes, and love letters. Here’s how one moment of tech talk turned into a full-blown nostalgia trip… Illustration: A smart fridge meets Shaktimaan in a time-traveling tribute to tech and nostalgia Teleportation may not be real yet, but conversations? They go places – fast. It all began with a colleague asking if my new refrigerator was installed. Another one chimed in, saying her son had read about fridges that interact with users—warning them before running out of stock. None of us had seen one yet, but we nodded in agreement. With AI and APIs evolving, it's no longer impossible. A refrigerator might soon do more than just cool and store—it could even place orders for restocking. That’s how rapidly Artificial Intelligence is changing our world. We can only imagine, as far as our imagination can stretch, what the future might look like. I said, “We’ll see things we can’t even ima...