The beautiful 90s

I feel lucky to have been born on the brink of the last decade of the 20th century. It gives me bragging rights to have lived in two centuries and two millenniums, but the beauty of the 90s were the simple and calm life. People were not dependant on machines and gadgets as they are now.

As I spent my childhood in the 90s, let me begin with cartoons. We had Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Ninja Turtles, Pink Panther, Loony Tunes, Captain Planet, SWAT Kats, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Fantastic Four, and many more. Kids today, are deprived of such classics. All they watch is the battling 'so-called' super heroes and the same thing is repeated in every other cartoon.

Moving on to the games, we were there to play Super Mario on Nintendo or Atari consoles and then SEGA came. For a Cricket lover like me, Brian Lara 96/99 was the perfect game to play. Who can forget Sonic, the Hedgehog? There were Snow Bros, Tekken, Street Fighter, one of the best games ever.

The SEGA Genesis console

If the games and cartoons were awesome, I am out of words to describe the TV shows. I grew up being a PTV kid, never had a satellite/cable TV connection at my home. In the 90s, PTV was at its peak. Everyday, I used to wake up for the school with the music of the cartoon. Back from school, the Pakistani version of  Sesame Street (Khul Ja Sim Sim), other children shows and Ainak Wala Jin was there everyday for the fun.

Ainak Wala Jin featuring Bil Batori (Top Left), Hamoon(Top Right), Nastoor(Bottom Left) and Zakoota (Bottom Right)

Movies now, I still remember how we watched the movies. We used to borrow the movie cassettes for the weekends and the whole family was up for it. Movies (Indian basically) were clean and enjoyable with families. I remember that every month or two, when we planned for a movie, the VCR was taken out from the closet, wrapped in clothes and the head was then cleaned. During the movie playback, sometimes the tape had to be removed and fixed because the VCR malfunctioned. Any ways, with all those difficulties, it was a fun to watch movies with the family and special gatherings were held for this purpose. Kuch Kuch Hota hai, Dil To Pagal Hai, Mohabbatain, Khal Nayak and Andaaz Apna Apna are my all time favourite movies.

For all those who don't know what a VCR was !!

I was always fond of Indian music and there'll be many people to second me that the music quality in the 90s was the best. They cannot make such melodious songs now. The romantic ones, the sad ones, they all were catchy. I don't really go for the music, I listen to the lyrics and those 90s songs had way better lyrics than today's. The lyrics were not vulgar and did justice with every age group.

Skipping to gadgets and technology, we witnessed the Windows 95 and the best operating software ever, Windows 98. No other operating software can beat Win 98 with its user friendliness. We didn't have mobile phones and fast internet but always kept in touch with our loved ones through telephone. We have saved data on Floppy Disks, we waited for the camera films to be developed after family gatherings such as weddings and birthday parties,  we didn't have Wi-Fi, we had Dial up Modems and we witnessed the first Pentium.

To sum up the discussion, the life in 90s was a simple and calm life. There was more fun in doing things because people were not very much dependant on machines and stuff, things were done with collaboration and together with families. Proud to be a 90s kid <3