Journalists are a funny bunch of people. Just when you think they can't ask you to work on a more peculiar story, they spring a few surprises. Take my editor, for instance, who walked into the office this morning and said, "Do you like nursery rhymes?"
"Yeah," I replied, "But, last time I checked, I'd outgrown them all."
"What else do you remember, about your childhood," he persisted. "When I say nostalgia, what comes to mind?"
Glaring at him, I sat back, closed my eyes, and rolled off words, places, names and personalities. There were recitals of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star' in chorus, playing Ludo on rainy days, reading Tarzan and Phantom comics under a table, and watching Spiderman in black and white.
That, for me, was as nostalgic as it could get.
"Good for you," he grinned. "Now go find out if the Internet can recreate that sense of déjà vu."
And so, here I am. Because, just between us, I need the job.
First things first. The word 'nostalgia' has a number of sources. It's Greek for 'nostos' which means to 'return home'. In Old English it comes from 'genesan' or, 'to survive'. It can also be traced to the Sanskrit 'nasate' -- 'he approaches.'
That done, on to the reminiscing. Let's start with school. While there were blackboards, sticks of chalk, bespectacled teachers, and nursery rhymes, it's impossible for me not to smile the minute I see the words Baa Baa Black sheep, Humpty Dumpty, or Hickory Dickory Dock.
Which is why it came as a pleasant surprise to find it all at this Nursery Rhymes site, neatly listed from All Around the Mulberry Bush to Georgie Porgie and Yankee Doodle. Mama Lisa's House of Nursery Rhymes , however, goes a step further to throw in audio clips and a bit of animation. Guaranteed to make your kids remember their lessons for a lot longer than you or I did.
Looking for a definition of the word nostalgia, I find: "A wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition." For proof, I go back to 1965, and Paul McCartney's "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away." Recorded over 3,000 times by other artists, that wistful little ditty by The Beatles was recently chosen the greatest pop song since 1963 by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine.
What else do you remember? Ripley's Believe it or Not? Weird, bizarre, funny and, now, online. Did anyone know that Robert Ripley was a real person? Apparently, he started as a cartoonist for the New York Globe in 1913 and created his famous strip a few years later. Travelling widely, Mr. Ripley gathered ideas, exotic stories and exhibits, becoming so popular in the bargain that he received millions of letters during his lifetime. Today, over 50 years after his death, the cartoon is printed daily in 147 papers worldwide, in 38 countries and 10 different languages.
Remember a children's digest called Chandamama? I do. Today's readers can log in at the GoYogi Children's Web site for its trademark Vikram and Vetal stories, fiction, mythology, brain teasers and games. The Panchatantra is on the web too, in full colour. Dating back to the fourth century AD, it is based on still earlier collections of folk tales, all primarily on animals.
What else? I remember monsoons spent indoors playing Ludo or Snakes and Ladders. If that gets you all misty-eyed, the game can be downloaded anytime you want. This Ludo program lets users customise the parameters of rules just by clicking the 'Game Options' icon. You can also changing the objective to 'Elimination Game,' where reset counters are discarded and not sent back. The winner is decided by the number of counters that reach home successfully.
Want Moksha-Patamu? That's Snakes and Ladders for the uninitiated, a game that actually originated in India as a 'morality' pastime where the ladders represented types of good. and the more numerous snakes represented various forms of evil.
If the history of the game is not your cup of tea, you can play it online at Bonus Snakes and Ladders . Just register, and start rolling that virtual dice.
What about those amazing Grimm's Fairy Tales? These Germanic folktales were collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 1800s. Though later edited and watered down by generations of editors trying to make them 'politically correct' you can still get 12 original tales based on a 1914 translation, at the National Geographic.
Now, to break the monotony, a confession. When I was in school, I once swung off the first floor of my building with a rope. The scar on the back of my head is still visible, but I can't stop loving Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. For the like-minded, scar or no scar, United Media has a daily strip on the jungle king that can be read online, or emailed to a friend. It also has information about other characters, and their creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Literature.org gives you the complete text, chapter by exciting chapter.
There were other heroes, of course, all tough, rugged, flashy, and capable of saving the planet from anything and everything. King Features Syndicate gives them a new lease of life, with loads of info on macho men like Flash Gordon and their creators. If they still get you as excited as they did when you were younger, issues can also be bought online.
The site has facts that would surprise most fans. Like this: One early Phantom married Christopher Columbus' granddaughter, while another married Shakespeare's niece. Or this: Mandrake the Magician was created by Lee Falk in 1934, during the Great Depression, in order to boost the morale of readers in the US.
Finally, one last stop on the Memories bandwagon: the college years. Noisy canteens, mini skirts, late night parties, and hours spent in movie theatres cursing or laughing at gems from the Films Division. The organisation holds over 8000 titles on documentaries, short films and animation films in its archives, which can be scoured by classification, year, names of directors, and title.
Strictly for those really interested in getting nostalgic, of course.
That's about it, I guess. People, places, movies, music. If none of what's here fits your bill, there's always a search engine. Chances are you'll find bits of it somewhere on the Net.
To be honest, nothing quite recreates the wonder years. Nothing makes you feel exactly what you felt all those years ago. And maybe a decade later, if I meet with another editor asking me to do exactly the same thing, I know I'd come away with the same fact: Nothing comes close to the past.
The sad truth though, is that it's all we've got. Remember Paul McCartney doing, "I believe in yesterday..."?
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