If you’re reading this on a 5G phone while your fridge tells you what to eat and your watch tells you when to breathe — pause. Let me take you back to a time when technology didn’t talk. It clicked, whirred, and buzzed. And we listened.

Welcome to 90s India — when luxury had plastic covers, entertainment had fixed hours, and everything, from water to wisdom, was drawn up slowly. Sometimes with a rope and pulley.

The Era of One Channel, Many Memories

Our first television was a Solidaire. The kind that needed a solid thwack on the side if the picture rolled. Ours had a strange problem. If we poured water on the antenna (remember those?), the picture was crystal clear. It had wooden panels, a proud spot in the living room, and came with a sense of occasion.

Back then, TV wasn’t background noise — it was the main event. Doordarshan was the only channel, and it didn’t even run 24×7. The same channel that gave us Malgudi Days, Surabhi, Turning Point, The World This Week and the iconic grainy Chitrahaar.

Cartoons? Once a week. Sunday mornings. If you missed DuckTales or Mowgli, you didn’t catch it later. Summer holidays would include VCP rental once in every household. 5 movies back to back, and parents allowed us to get ONE English film, provided it was very very clean. 

Phone Calls and Ownership Debates

There were no cellphones. Just one landline in the house (if you were lucky), often covered with a crocheted cap like it might catch a cold. Calling a friend’s house meant talking to their mother first.

Phones were rare, and landline installation came with two acronyms that split households: OYT (Own Your Telephone) and NOYT (Non Own Your Telephone). The difference?  ₹1,500 and a 2–3-year waiting list if you chose wrong.

We debated it like we were choosing between a house and a car. The phone itself came with a lockable dial – to prevent “unnecessary” calls. Dialling 161 would make a fake ring. We used this extensively to make it look like an incoming call while secretly making an outgoing one.

Texting was called writing letters. And privacy? Only if your sibling wasn’t picking up the parallel line in another room. Instant messaging was known as Telegrams. Usually, came with some bad news. 

Our First Vehicles. And Their Personality.

Mobility came in the form of the TVS 50 — half moped, half miracle. It couldn’t outrun a dog, but could carry three generations and a gas cylinder.

It wasn’t a bike. It was an emotion. Our emotion was stolen right in front of our eyes as it didn’t even have an ignition key. You could pedal, hold the clutch and vroom. That last vroom hurt us bad.

Just like the fridge. Ours was a BPL — a white wonder with a freezer that looked like a snow cave. When it arrived, we did what every self-respecting middle-class family did — we called the neighbours to see it.

Water Wasn’t Just a Utility. It Was a Ritual.

Before tankers and water purifiers, we had a well. A real one. With a rope, pulley, and a metal bucket that echoed as it hit water.

Every monsoon, the well would fill up with silt, and we’d call professional well cleaners — lean men with no harnesses, just faith and footwork, who went down into the earth like they were entering another world.

Come summer, I’d dig into that clay pile from the well-cleaning and make things — snakes, diyas, miniature tea cups. It was art, science, and mischief rolled into one muddy afternoon.

When Learning Computers Was a Career Move

Forget AI. We learnt FoxPro, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic at places like NIIT and Aptech. I chose SSI – Software Solutions International. Hell yeah! The certificates felt like passports. The labs were cold. The computers booted in black screens with white text that blinked like it knew secrets.

“Login failed” meant two hours of debugging. Not resetting your password.

Taste of the Times

The 90s had a flavor. And it tasted like Big Fun bubble gum. It came with cricket cards — faded photos of Kapil Dev or Gavaskar — and the gum lost all taste in 4 chews. But you still chewed it like it was currency.

Gold Spot was fizzy euphoria. Rasna was childhood in powder form. Rola Cola, Parrys toffee, Kismi bar — sugar and nostalgia mixed in perfect ratios.

Dial-Up and the Sound of Hope

Remember Caltiger? India’s first free internet service provider. Patchy, full of ads but glorious. You clicked “Connect”, and your modem screamed like it was being exorcised.

We browsed in Internet Explorer. Typed in Yahoo Chat with people named CoolDude_84. And prayed the power wouldn’t go out mid-download — because a single MP3 could take two hours to download.

And if someone picked up the landline? Game over.

When Gaming Meant Blowing Into the Cassette

PlayStation who? We had TV video games — those grey consoles with 9999 games in 1 (of which 9990 were Super Mario, renamed). You had to blow into the cartridge like it was a birthday candle just to make it work.

Remember Contra? Road Rash on a friend’s PC? Or Dave? If you played Prince of Persia on a DOS prompt, you’re officially a legend (aka relic).

When Every Click Counted. Literally.

Before megapixels and mirrorless marvels, there was the roll camera. Ours was a Kodak knockoff that took 35 shots per roll — not 36, not unlimited, just 35. Each click felt like a commitment. You framed. You squinted. You prayed.

And once the last photo was taken, the real anxiety began: winding the film back carefully. One wrong turn and the whole roll could be exposed to light and ruined. Then came the wait — 3 days (minimum) for the local photo studio to “develop and wash” the roll.

You didn’t get previews. You got surprises. Heads chopped off, eyes closed, fingers over the lens — all proudly stuck in albums with cracked plastic sleeves.

The camera used to make memories.
Now it manages anxiety.

When Family Finances Had Simple Math

Our parents didn’t have EMIs, SIPs, or Finfluencers. They had Govt Jobs at HAL, BHEL, BEL or ITI and PF, LIC and Overtime.
The legend: 1.5x salary for OT.

If Achan (dad) worked a few late nights, you waited for free buns when he got back at night and hoped for an upgrade to a colour TV sometime next year. 

So What Happened?

Everything changed. We upgraded from scarcity to abundance. From waiting to why isn’t it here yet.

We grew up with fewer distractions but deeper experiences. With real connections — literal and emotional. With clay and rope. With chitrahaar and chalk.

And that’s what makes the 90s unforgettable. It wasn’t just a decade. It was a transition — between analog and algorithm, between pulling water from a well and streaming HD from the cloud.

If you grew up in that time, you didn’t just live through change — you became its bridge.

If this post triggered a flashback or know someone who once walked home holding a cassette labelled “Best of Michael Jackson – Side A”. share it with your fellow 90s tribe.

If you have your favourite 90s memory, drop it in the comments section.