We were born buffering.
Between cassette and chaos,
between cable connection and moral correction,
between parents who said, “We struggled, so you must too.”
We were raised by scarcity,
adopted by television,
and orphaned by silence.
Time wasn’t running; it was walking barefoot on gravel,
and every minute sounded like static on Doordarshan.
We didn’t scroll, we waited.
We didn’t swipe, we hoped.
We didn’t delete, we endured.
We were the last humans
who knew the weight of waiting.
Every Indian 90s kid had one truth:
your parents were the WiFi,
and the password was their mood.
You didn’t “stream” cartoons.
You earned them —
by surviving school, homework,
and your mother’s existential disappointment.
We thought trauma was a teaching aid.
We thought “communication gap” was a syllabus chapter.
We thought love meant convincing your crush
to write on your hand with her Reynolds pen
and never wash it.
We didn’t have Instagram aesthetics.
We had that one photo where everyone blinked.
You weren’t pretty, you were developed.
By a man in a dark room who smelt of chemicals and despair.
Our gadgets were humble:
Walkman, radio, pencil (for open-heart surgery on cassettes).
We were surgeons of sound,
mechanics of memory,
priests of patience.
When we hit play,
it didn’t just start music, it started faith.
Because if the tape didn’t tangle,
God existed.
We had no playlists.
Just one cassette titled “Mixed Feelings Vol. 3.”
We didn’t need algorithms to find our vibe;
our vibe was heartbreak,
replayed on loop until the ribbon snapped.
Our syllabus never mentioned therapy.
Pain was extracurricular.
We didn’t chase closure;
we chased cassette repair shops.
Our fathers mistook silence for obedience.
Our mothers mistook exhaustion for gratitude.
Our teachers mistook fear for respect.
And all of us mistook survival for success.
Every exam felt like a moral referendum.
Every mark was an apology
for not being the child they imagined.
We didn’t know we were depressed.
We just said, “Bas mood off hai.”
And everyone nodded like it was curable
by mango Frooti.
Let’s be honest,
the 90s were a badly directed sitcom
where everyone had laugh tracks but no joy.
Our superheroes wore capes made of cheap nylon.
Our villains smoked Charminar.
Our romantic heroes stalked women to flute music.
And our parents thought
“privacy” was a Western conspiracy.
We didn’t get “the talk.”
We got “the silence.”
And then biology did its thing,
and we called it mystery.
Our idea of rebellion?
Writing “F***” on the back page of a notebook
and hiding it under moral science notes.
We were rebels without WiFi.
Freedom fighters with prepaid balance.
Philosophers who could quote Eminem
but couldn’t spell “therapy.”
But nostalgia, my friends,
isn’t remembering the past,
it’s grieving the version of you
that still believed the world was fixable.
It’s missing the you
who didn’t yet need an audience to exist.
The you who thought growing up
meant freedom,
not burnout with a salary slip.
Nostalgia is that gentle ache
that says,
you were happier when you didn’t know
who you were supposed to be.
We had slam books — our first social contracts.
Pages asking “best friend?” and “crush?” like love could be notarized in glitter ink.
A democracy of secrets bound by cello tape and betrayal.
Every page smelled like Fevicol, perfume, and pre-puberty guilt.
That’s where we learned the art of selective honesty,
how to be vulnerable, but aesthetically.
“Describe me in one word?” — complicated,
because ‘lonely’ didn’t fit in the space provided.
We rated friendships out of ten
like economists forecasting emotional inflation.
And if someone wrote ‘forever’, we circled it twice
to see if it still meant something next semester.
Today, we call it networking;
back then, we called it friendship with conditions.
Same script. Cleaner alphabets.
But at least back then,
our lies had handwriting.
Sometimes I think
we weren’t kids,
we were beta versions of adults
released before the software update.
We were born in and as disruptions.
We glitched without server downtimes.
We laughed without screenshots.
We loved without blue ticks.
We didn’t archive people, we lost them.
And somehow, that made memory sacred.
We were never lonely;
we were alone together.
Which is better.
Because you can heal alone.
Loneliness just wants likes.
And yet…
I’d rewind it all.
The static.
The scolding.
The smell of chalk and hot summers and broken dreams.
The country that never understood you
but raised you anyway.
Because the 90s weren’t a decade.
They were a glitch in time
when imperfection still felt like home.
So tonight,
when the world scrolls past meaning,
and silence costs more than gold.
I close my eyes,
hear that faint, holy, analog hum…
and whisper to the ghosts of all we were —
“Please insert Side B.”
But maybe Side B was never meant to play.
Maybe it’s the part of life that records over itself,
dreams on top of heartbreak,
hope on top of static.
Maybe that’s what growing up really is:
learning that even tape has a lifespan,
and silence is not the absence of sound,
it’s the sound of everything you didn’t say in time.
Because nostalgia isn’t homesickness.
It’s timesickness.
It’s wanting to go back
to the last day you didn’t know you were leaving.
And I think of all of us —
sitting in our fluorescent offices,
scrolling like archaeologists through our own pasts,
trying to excavate who we were
before we learned to perform it.
Maybe that’s why we still keep the Walkman,
the postcards, the SMS drafts, the stupid friendship bands —
because somewhere, deep inside,
we hope memory is a recyclable material.
Maybe every time we laugh at an old ad,
every time we hum a jingle,
every time we say “back in the day,”
we are not reminiscing,
we are rebooting.
And I wonder
when God presses play again,
will He start from where we paused,
or rewind to the part
where we still believed in magic without proof?
So tonight,
if you go home and open that dusty drawer of half-lived years,
don’t look for souvenirs.
Look for versions.
Versions of you that smiled without strategy.
Versions that failed without metrics.
Versions that loved without logic.
Because the truth is,
we weren’t children of the 90s.
We were the 90s.
Everything that broke,
everything that hoped to heal,
everything that refused to make sense
until someone turned it into art.
So maybe there is no Side B.
Maybe we were always the song that never fully played.
Maybe that’s what makes us worth remembering:
the imperfections, the nuances, the borderless blur,
the alloy of a life mapped in missing dots.
Still, just in case,
please insert Side B.
