The
picture above is taken from a mural promo for a college cultural festival, and
you guessed it, the theme, “#Nostalgia”.
That
is the first point of contention, the title is.
In
1978, I wrote (actually wrote! Take that for nostalgia!) a letter and my
address was “#408, Rose Lane ...” My parents wrote me back and started off the
letter saying, “What is this #? Anyway, we are reproducing it and hope the
letter reaches you!” The hash symbol, in those days, carried the meaning “Number” at least in the context of a street address.
So, I read the title as “Number Nostalgia” and it did not make any sense to me.
Then
I understood that the festival “#Nostalgia” is for the current generation and
perhaps the immediately preceding one and not for near-dinosaurs like me.
Having
said that, the near-dinosaurian collections as depicted on the mural did bring
a huge smile to my face. I recalled most of them as belonging to times when I
was a teenager or at best a 20 something.
The
diskette! I am glad the artist did not paint the larger, thinner disk! But, the
hour glass predates them all. I wonder where the artist got this idea (from the
waist of actress Simran, you say?). Truly inspirational, nostalgic inspiration.
The
camera on the bottom row is difficult to accept because even the current
professional digital SLRs look the same. I had to exercise my brain to imagine
it as a film SLR. Thinking is the last thing one does when immersed in nostalgia. There is incongruence
here!
Mario
and Pacman! I do not know how many dots Pacman devoured with me at the joy
stick helm, but surely he swallowed thousands of quarters (1/4 of a dollar) of mine!
Negative nostalgia.
TVs
with dials, cars with circular headlamps, paper aeroplanes (this is how my generation
spelt it!) and phones with wires (except the ones that blast away in one’s
ears) are truly nostalgic. But, did you notice ... the car does not have a
steering wheel! – driverless car! Not nostalgic ... tut, tut.
There
are hordes of fans of Rajnikanth who would be seriously offended. The trailer
of Kabali is breaking records and the
people behind the mural thought he belongs to the “Nostalgia” – even if it be
preceded by a hash tag – cadre. Such insults, the protagonist himself may let
go of this slight but his fans will definitely not, even in the days of
Vijay/Ajith et al. Beware!
Coming
to the end of mural parsing, one last item.
The
current generation thinks that we, of the older generation, are idiots, had too
much time on our hands, or both. Look at the Tic-tac-toe square (third from the
top along the right edge). None of my generation would fail to spot the
incongruity/redundancy indicated in the picture. But, it did skip the artist
and more relevantly, it took the genius (used very loosely) of someone from my
generation (yours truly) to spot this blemish, and no one else the wiser
earlier.
On
the mural, the game was started by ‘O’s (interpreted from the fact that the
completed square has 5 ‘O’s) and ‘X’ comes out the winner. The ninth stroke in
this case belongs to ‘O’, who would have lost the game by then! So, why would
she put the last stroke ‘O’? Had time on her hands or being stupid, not
noticing she has already lost.
Well,
that ends my mural gazing and parsing (better than (navel) lint gazing, I
suppose).
Raghuram
Ekambaram
4 comments:
Nice parse sir. Thank you for the new word (parse) I learnt today. I accept most of your views and have one thing to be shared.
Depicting rajinikanth’s portrait in the mural, we saw it as not just rajinikanth but as mannic baasha.
In that times each and every kid would have repeated that famous dialogue “na oru thadava sonna nooru thadava sonna matri…” at least once and I too have done it many a times. Hence I felt little nostalgic seeing his photo. Thank you sir
Balaji
Thanks Balaji. Hope you are doing OK in your exams. Don't waste time on my useless scribbles. Thanks for elaborating on Rajnikanth. My favourite is, "en vazhi, Thani vazhi" from Padaiyappa, as told to Nilambari!
RE
These are some remarks about how life has changed. In the 50s and 60s one used to rarely see men with kumkum on the forehead. It has become quite common now. Another change ( which is much more interesting) is that in south salwar kameez was seen rather rarely. But today even
small towns and villages have girls wearing these (R Guha had an interesting article on this quite sometime ago). I think for ladies it is a step forward since they did it inspite of
objections by men) ; for men wearing Kumkum is a step backwards - outward show of religion and the need to show off
As an insider, let me say something regarding men wearing kum kum or other marks of religion on their forehead - it is de rigueur in certain places, supposedly not affiliated with any religion. But, that is not nostalgia; rather it is reconstructing nostalgia!
Thanks for the additions, pala
Raghuram
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