I came across this picture on Twitter. It's an ad that ran in Target, a magazine published in the 80s. Being in the advertising racket, I couldn't help but notice the plainness of the text; a simple announcer for new packaging. Us copywriters are told to inspire readers with the communication like they used to before, though from the looks of it, direct, no-nonsense stuff was being published back in the 80s too. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, and all that.
While many facets of the picture triggered of a deluge of nostalgia amongst friends, it was seeing the second bar from the top that caused a familiar dull ache in my chest. Any time I see the old Amul Fruit & Nut pack, I'm instantly transported back to an extremely humble, 1-RK in Bombay. I am sitting on a pink, mosaic marble tiled floor, the kind that's sadly gone out of fashion now, impatiently waiting for my Pati to open the front door and welcome my Thatha back from one of his mysterious (to a 4-yr old at least) business 'tours'.
He'd always return home with some speciality of the city he'd visited - oranges from Nagpur and the old, big Bakarwadis from Pune are what I recollect now. But no matter where he'd been, I'd always receive a bar of Amul Fruit & Nut Chocolate. We were a family of extremely modest means, enough that Amul would appear in my life only on these occasions. And memory being what it is, I'm sure other flavours of the chocolate showed up too. But that green and gold bar became associated with him, those times and that life.
Back then, it never crossed my mind to wonder what kind of work took my Thatha away from home for a few days. Sadly, I did not get around to asking him about it later either, even when he regaled me with stories of his childhood in the erstwhile Travancore state, his boarding school life in a convent there, his sporting prowess as a goalkeeper or his determination to excel academically that kept his room light burning far into the night. I guess his kids had heard these tales before. They'd had quite enough but well, his grandson hadn't, so Thatha found a willing listener in me, no matter how many times he repeated them. As I grew older, I took great delight in being told that I resembled him in demeanour and certain habits. Yet, as the years passed, he became increasingly reticent, cocooned in his simple world of daily rituals. I didn't make an effort to coax him to share more about his life. With time steadily eroding his mind, he held
on to these stories even more fiercely because everything else was crumbling away. And, just like that, the stories came to an end.
I wish Thatha was alive and well now. How I'd like to talk to him about his job in Churchgate, his love for classical Indian music, the meticulously arranged cassettes of singers and musicians, his proficiency at card games... and so much more. We don't do as much as we can with and for the people in our lives, and by the time we realise how precious those years are, it's too late. We become distracted or busy while they watch us make familiar mistakes, go through similar experiences and live contemporary versions of their lives.
I still eat Amul Fruit & Nut now, but it's not the same. The pack is plainer & sleeker (modern design has sucked joie de vivre out of it) and the flavour has more dark chocolate in it. But what's really missing is explained in the ad. Because those Green & Gold Amul Fruit & Nut bars were a gift for someone my Thatha loved.
“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything rotates, everything flies and disappears." - Frida Kahlo
Song for the moment: Rahe Na Rahe Hum - Mamta OST (1966)
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