As I was clearing away the flowers from the the Tamil New Year’s puja, deep red roses and sunshine yellow marigolds, I was reminded of this Indi-pop song which played almost on loop on the television for a while during my childhood.
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In about four minutes, the lyrics in colloquial Tamil mixed with rap depict a gentle love story spanning five years. A story characteristic of the time when there was no internet or mobile phones, and yet people were connected so much more deeply. The silk half-saris and crisp starched cotton saris worn by the heroine, letters written by hand and dropped into the postbox, long-distance phone calls made from a payphone. The picturisation is dated albeit charmingly in so many ways.

I sometimes wonder about the excitement with which I chose my specialisation in communication engineering as a starry-eyed undergraduate. Would I have still loved my subject as I did had I known that the communication revolution would take away the world as we knew it in the nineties? Not complaining though, I love technology for the way it has simplified life, and made knowledge that was hidden and warped through the centuries, open and accessible to all.

But relics of that gloriously innocent period of the nineties remain, like this song which makes one pause, and smile, as marigolds of memories bloom within the mind.