Nostalgic …??

I officially graduated yesterday (May 23rd 2009) from an MBA program. The graduation ceremony was grand. I was wearing regalia in the same manner as I used to see in movies when I was kid. Unfortunately, we haven’t copied this stuff yet from Oxford history in Delhi University unlike US and Australian universities. So this was my first time. All firsts are memorable. Somehow, the ends always remind you of beginnings. Even though you progress in time, you always feel that the days were sunnier and brighter back in those times. Those were the days, everyone recalls with a similar amusement, irrespective of the time horizon they are talking about. I am having the same feeling today. Am I feeling nostalgic?? Or, is it just the effect of the scientific fact that Sun is getting older.

Nostalgia is pictured very precisely in a shampoo commercial or in the new improved Dove commercial. Nostalgia has always been a landscape of longing where the sun is sunnier, the blue sky bluer, the breeze breezier and most importantly the prices less pricier. You can figure out a person's age by the prices that the person remembers. The rule of thumb is that the lower the prices, the older the person.

Coke at one rupee a bottle? You think that was cheap? Then obviously you weren't around when Coke was four annas. Yes, that's right, just four annas a bottle!! What? Who's Anna? Oh my god, you young people, you know nothing about the old times. Anna as in 16 annas made a rupee; an anna was a coin, not a Russian girl's name. The best smuggled cigarettes, from America and England, were two rupees for a pack of 20. And you could smoke when and where you liked, including in movie theatres, without busybody health ministers slapping fines on you.

Salaries? You got a job with a starting salary of 300 a month, you were doing fine. There was this young guy, everyone used to point him out. He used to earn a thousand a month. Yeah, a thousand. Most eligible bachelor around, with half the moms in the community wanting to become his mom-in-law. It was said the rate he was going it wouldn't surprise anyone if he didn't end up with a bank account in lakhs (one followed by five zeros) by the time he retired. Yup, a cool lakh. What'd you think of that? If I go by my memory, I remember in this famous Bollywood movie – Maine Pyar Kiya – the hero was supposed to earn two thousand rupees a month to be able to get the girl’s hand. Dollar? What’s that? Oh, you have been to America???? “My uncles’ son’s friend’s dad’s sister-in law “stays” there and I went three years ago to visit them”, someone would boastfully claim.

Like all commercials, this shampoo commercial had to end to create a definition of Nostalgia. The delicate past of soft light and softer prices suddenly seemed to get swallowed up in the shining glare of the present reality. The price tags for almost every product were fast approaching the prices of a Louis Vuitton bag, jumping up every minute like a taxi meter with a nervous tic. Overnight the billions became the new millions. Salaries were no longer calculated in so many hundreds or thousands a month; they were computed on the basis of millions per annum, Diwali bonus extra. A centrally located two-bedroom flat? To buy? Forget it, unless your uncle was Lakshmi Mittal, or Ambanis. And don't ask for change, not even for five bucks, which was now the cost of the smallest bottle of Coke.

Fast forward to today and the world has changed. Thanks to the global economic downturn, nostalgia soon might not be what it used to be. And then, like a balloon pumped up with too much gas, the boom went bust. Recession promises to reverse the definition of nostalgia: the past seen as the realm of not small but huge prices. Already, the millions have become the new billions. You talk about property, commodity, salaries – everywhere. 20,000-plus Mumbai Sensex - was it only a year ago? It seems like another age altogether. No one talks about the price of Coke anymore; they just drink home-made lime-water to save the money.

And who knows? If the recession persists, an elderly father might recall with fondness how as a fresh MBA way back then were offered their first job at a six-figure package. Gees, that's fantastic, Dad but tell me: what's a job? might ask his 27-year-old son.