It was a hot evening. I was pottering towards home from work, amusing myself with delicious fantasies of my manager being shred to pieces by a werewolf, him yelling out to me for help, and me mimicking him, "Time sheet first, everything else next, sir. Off I go to fill my time sheet". And to my utter surprise, out of some unknown recess of my mind - if you could call it that - popped a song that I promptly mouthed. It went like this: "chaddi pekken ki phool kila hai phool kila hai". At first I couldn't ascertain whose chaddi it was that occupied my mind, especially when I was relishing a rather pleasant day-dream, but presently a realization dawned on me that the chaddi I was singing the praises of belonged to Mowgli, my favorite cartoon character during Doordharsan Days. (How my mind managed to connect Mowgli and Manager is more than I could imagine.)
There was more surprise on the way. I could recall the whole song, even though I couldn't make head or tail of the song when I learned it by-heart as a kid. South Indian boys growing up in Chennai could scarcely be expected to understand Hindi. I was overcome with absurd thrill. The memory of this song is my link to the distant past; to the days when I would dash to Prasanna anna's house on Sunday mornings to watch The Jungle Days (television was still a luxury then), and so would a bunch of my friends. Mami (her name has escaped my mind) would give us reproachful glances, and mama would add to her agony... "kozhanthaikalunga ethavathu sapida kodu di". :-D But we were young then and Mowgli was more important than our pride. :P We would have hardly budged until the end of the show even if threatened at gun-point.
Directly I reached home, I jumped onto youtube and played the title song. And I enjoyed it as well as I did as a kid. I can safely say that the child in me is still alive and kicking. :-)
Here's to the good old DD days. :-)