Why the 90s
Never Really Ended

From a small railway platform in Bahraich to a Sunday morning silence broken only by the Ramayan’s conch shell — this is a personal, unashamedly nostalgic walk through the decade that refuses to fade.

A Sunday Morning in a Small Town Called Bahraich

In a small town like Bahraich, Sunday mornings had their own unspoken rhythm. By nine, the entire street would fall silent by some unstated agreement. Even the milkman hurried, even the vegetable cart paused — because the Ramayan was about to begin, followed by the Mahabharat. The elders would bathe, light an incense stick, and settle in front of the television, and we children, however reluctantly, would sit quietly beside them.

In that one hour, the entire neighbourhood seemed to breathe as one. The same theme music drifted from the house next door, from the balcony across the lane. If the picture flickered on someone’s set, a child would race up to the roof to adjust the antenna, and a voice from below would call out, “Wait, wait — it’s coming in clear now!” It was such an ordinary sight, and yet, looking back, an entire town was breathing together without ever realising it.

Then came Chitrahaar on Wednesdays, or the Sunday evening film for which homework was always finished in advance. Shaktimaan’s arrival was nothing short of a festival — we would attempt his spinning stance in the courtyard, half-convinced that some of that power lived in us too. The New Year’s Day special on Doordarshan was its own ritual, the whole family gathered as though the year itself began only once the programme did.

Those were the mornings, those were the evenings, that taught us — without ever saying so — how to wait, and why sitting together mattered.

Nandan, Parag and the Wait for the Postman

If television set the rhythm of the week, magazines set the rhythm of the month. The arrival of Nandan and Parag was nothing less than a small festival — new stories, new riddles, and that particular smell of fresh ink as you turned the first page. Diwana and Dharmyug sat on the elders’ table, while Illustrated Weekly and Madhuri were read half in secret, knowing full well some pages were “for the grown-ups.” The Hindustan newspaper slid under the door each morning, and its Sunday supplement was saved carefully for the whole week.

This was never just reading — it was a kind of sharing. Someone would bring a new story to school, and the magazine would pass hand to hand across the whole class, sometimes with torn pages, sometimes still stamped with a library’s name it had been “borrowed” from. Every magazine was a small treasure, and sharing that treasure mattered as much as reading it.

Looking back now, nostalgia is really an attempt to fill the absence of that habit of sharing. Even today, the sight of an old magazine cover makes us pause — because it is never just paper. It brings back an entire afternoon.

“A time gone by never comes back around,
Yet the lamp of memory is never truly extinguished.”— original verse

Campa Cola, Rasna and the Taste of Summer

If the taste of the 90s could be bottled, it would be that chilled bottle of Campa Cola handed out at village fairs and wedding feasts, or that packet of Rasna which, once mixed, filled the whole room with an orange fragrance. Making a glass of Rooh Afza on a summer afternoon was practically a ritual — the pink hue, the ice cubes clinking, and a mother’s voice calling out, “Don’t drink too much, it’s almost time to eat.” A bottle of Gold Spot arrived only on special occasions, and turning the empty bottle over in your hands afterward is remembered almost as fondly as the taste itself.

A sweet paan with supari after meals was common in nearly every household. Grandfather would stop at the paan shop and have it made just so, handing us a small piece on the way back. Even today, that faint bittersweet scent of supari brings back the memory of an old home, for no particular reason at all.

The Old Bahraich Station and a Journey That Never Seemed to End

The old Bahraich railway station still lives in memory exactly as it was — crowds on the platform, steel trunks and rolled bedding, and announcements that were half understood, half lost in the noise. The waiting would begin long before the train arrived, sometimes for hours, the whole family seated around the luggage, elders checking their watches again and again.

Boarding the general compartment was a small battle in itself — an uncle would sprint ahead for the window seat, and winning it felt like no small prize. The journey was long, sometimes very long — the train stopping at every small station, the calls of tea and peanut vendors drifting in, and somewhere in that crowded compartment, a stranger becoming a friend as though you had known each other for years. The earthy smell of tea in a clay kulhad, and the broken kulhad still in your hand as the journey ended — all of it feels as fresh today as it did back then.

School and college days were much like that same journey — slow, crowded, yet every moment worth remembering. Cycling to school, staying up all night before an exam, racing to the field the moment the last bell rang with friends in tow — all of it just as precious as any long journey.

“That journey was certainly long, but it carried a warmth of its own — in the crowd, in the waiting. Perhaps that is exactly what today’s faster, more comfortable travel has lost.”

“That moment on the platform still stays within the heart,
Time raced on so quickly, yet memory’s journey never did depart.”

Why the 90s Never Really Ended

Perhaps that is exactly why the 90s never truly ended — because it was never just a decade. It was an art of waiting, of sitting together, of finding complete joy in the smallest things. Those Ramayan-Mahabharat mornings, the wait for Nandan and Parag, that sweet sip of Campa Cola, and every long moment spent at that Bahraich station — these are not merely memories. They are a part of who we are.

This wave of retro culture is really an attempt to touch that part of ourselves again. Every time an old jingle plays, an old magazine cover appears, or the whistle of a small station is heard, we return, if only for a moment, to that same sense of belonging.

So the next time such a memory rises unbidden — a mother’s hand stirring Rooh Afza, a grandfather’s paan shop, the crowd at an old railway platform — do not dismiss it as merely bygone. It is simply asking you to pause, to stay a while, and to feel that you belong just as much today as you did back then.

Press Play On Your Own Memory

Which memory just played in your mind — a magazine, a station, a summer drink? Share it in the comments.