The way we were then

A couple of days ago I read a scintillating article by poetwriterfilmmaker Pritish Nandy Titled lsquoThe way we are todayrsquo it takes us back in time when we were all poor some had no money some had little and none had a lot but happy and nursed radical ideas over cups of nimbuchai tumblers of filter coffee or glasses of rum pani depending on the state of the health of our wallet I donrsquot know about others who read the essay but I was transported to my growing up years in what was then a onestreet up country town called JamshedpurBarring pockets of privatelyowned dwellings which were also islands of relative affluence Jamshedpur was one sprawling colony where everybody was equally unrich We belonged to what was referred to as the lsquomiddleclassrsquo quite unlike todayrsquos middleclasses Values and not the monthly salary daddy brought home defined this amorphous segment of Indian societyOne of the proverbs I learned early in life though I have not practised it was lsquoCut your coat according to your clothrsquo My mother would not tire of reminding me lsquoWaste not want notrsquo Food was never thrown into the garbage bin it was recycled and reborn with exotic names possibly coined to gloss over the misery of having to make do with shortagesWe were not poor nor were our neighbours including those in the extended neighbourhood We were as I said unrich Our parents counted their pennies We wore cotton as terylene was too flash and terrycot too expensive We wore Bata shoes bought during festive season discount sale A pair of stretchlon pants was the ownerrsquos pride and the beholderrsquos envySimple living high thinking was a mantra of sorts Being spartan was fashionable Mahatma Gandhi would not have approved any deviation from the Biblical strait and the narrow In a sense being unrich was nice the rich were to be tolerated but not emulatedThe way we were was largely on account of the way India was The shortage economy governed by the licencepermitquota raj was the only economy we knew What we knew of the West was a coloured version Materialism was not a guarantor of happiness We were happyWe were happy to make do with shoddy lsquoMade in Indiarsquo merchandise and drool over lsquoMade in Japanrsquo twoinones At home medicine foil was recycled to scrub utensils and newspapers and magazines were sold separately as the latter fetched more money Jugaad the means of doing without what would be considered necessary anywhere else in the world for instance in repairing an iron or making a ramshackle radio with burned out valves work became a national passionNever mind the iron repaired laboriously with a bit of this and a bit of that would either overheat or remain stone cold and the radio would have more hiss and cackle than decipherable sound We never innovated nor designed we copycatted and produced wretched replicas of which we were immensely proud Fine sewing needles much in demand were smuggled in from Japan They were then stamped lsquoMade in USArsquo mdashUlhasnagar Sindhi Association or so the joke wentLife in my town was predetermined as were ambitions predefined Most of us who went to Loyola School dreamt of three lsquoFrsquos that would follow in normal course if you were able to land a job with the Tatas a flat a fridge and a Fiat In Calcutta where Pritish Nandy was growing up young men and women from unrich families dreamt of revolution and the Peoplersquos Liberation Army marching in In the meanwhile they read Brecht debated dialectics of materialism and wrote Dylanesque poems that were published by Writers WorkshopWhen the Revolution failed and the PLA stayed put at Shanghai Pritish Nandy and his friends slipped into jobs and professions that were always open to them The blue chip companies which had their headquarters in Calcutta would not hire anybody else The ad agencies thought the world of Bengali copywriters and designers Only Aparna Sen could make a film like 36 Chowringhee Lane and Paroma in whose production Pritish Nandy had more than a little roleAnd when they got bored they moved on To new jobs new cities new lives As for those of use who baulked at the thought of staying on in Jamshedpur we sailed forth in search of a living if not fame and fortune Thatrsquos how the unrich became rich And thats how India changed gradually at first and rapidly later making the pursuit of wealth a perfectly legitimate and respectable aim in lifeThe writer is a senior journalist based in the National Capital Region His Twitter handle is KanchanGupta