How was life in Bombay in the 80s and 90s?

[tweaker]

17 minutes ago, narenpande1 said:

 

 

The most ridiculous rule was one bounce catch by fielder is valid and out. (" Ek tappi out " ) . I dont know from where this originated 

but in all the different buildings we played in be it mine or relatives in  ( Borivali, Andheri, Parle or Ghatkopar) - every where " ek tappi out" 

was the building rule. 

 

We played with" ek tappi out".It was fun,fast & very entertaining.There were no lbw & there was always a fight when someone was declared bowled. The batsman never believed he could be bowled.

 

Good old days.

[coffee_rules]

Corollary to the 'Ek Tappa out' rule was to catch it in 'one hand'. 'One tappa one hand'. It originated from the fact that gung-ho batters would take the aerial route and lose the  ball or break the neighbor's glass. And there were batters who would bat all day, this was another way to make sure all get to bat. 

[Gollum]

Most of the cricket rules you folk are talking about were pan India at least when I was young, don't know about this generation.

[narenpande1]

There was a great charm in being the youngest and " kaccha limbu " which I was almost always.

You are feted and considered of great value by your teams lazy ass seniors when you save3-4 boundaries with your bare foot in 5 over games.

Then you negotiate and plead with him to make you bat 1 down as a reward for saving a few fours and saying you won't waste balls. Then all you do is swing like a wild beast and last 3-4 balls. 1 genuine big hit, 1 fluke hit, 1 swing and miss and then out. This was a summary of my building cricket career  

Edited May 4, 2017 by narenpande1

[Texan]

14 hours ago, veer said:

Lol.. all those rules are just gold.

And then runs only beyond bowler's crease.. one bounce is also out.. there was no umpire so in those close run-out or catch decisions usually goes to whichever team has biigger bully type kid.. if ball hits tree and come back in your building it is still valid..

 

High speed under bowling is not allowed (too hard to handle.. lol).. If ball goes in stinky gutter then batsman has to take it out

Great memories all. To add to the "hit tree and back not out rule", we used to have a 4 storey building just outside our ground on the leg side and the way the pitch was situated, there was no off-side at all. So, if you had to hit a six or four, you had to pull/hook/glance towards the leg side.

 

I remember playing the last ball of the match and needing 6 runs to win. I had already made up my mind that I am going to play a bombastic sweep or hook that should hit the building beyond the ground and bounce back into the ground.

 

As it happened, bowler came in, bowled a slower ball trying to induce a false stroke....

 

I read the slower ball, adjusted my stroke and swept the slower ball all the way towards the building....

 

Immediately after I hit it, I knew I have a home run here.

 

As I watched, the damn ball came so well off the middle of the bat, that it flew outside the ground and over the 4 storey building and on to the other side of the building. Freaking OUT!!! Never thought I would actually clear that building because nobody in the history of our society cricket ever had.

[randomGuy]

8 hours ago, narenpande1 said:

There was a great charm in being the youngest and " kaccha limbu " which I was almost always.

You are feted and considered of great value by your teams lazy ass seniors when you save3-4 boundaries with your bare foot in 5 over games.

Then you negotiate and plead with him to make you bat 1 down as a reward for saving a few fours and saying you won't waste balls. Then all you do is swing like a wild beast and last 3-4 balls. 1 genuine big hit, 1 fluke hit, 1 swing and miss and then out. This was a summary of my building cricket career  

 Bachpan ki yaadain...I used to be a pphastt boiler back in the day. Thinking about it now, I feel fast bowling is like going against the body. Not the smartest thing to do. But one can't resist of course, because of the feeling one gets from beating batsman with pace, hitting him on the body , getting him bowled out etc.

Edited May 4, 2017 by randomGuy

[Mariyam]

@Gollum I think you over estimate the influence of the underworld. They hardly were a consideration in how most people led their lives.

I used to stay in Worli for a few years during my childhood. The Doordarshan tower was our North star. You could see it from anywhere and it could be your homing beacon to direct you to your place of residence. Nowadays, there are so many high rises that you can't even see the tower any longer.

Natural's Ice Cream used to be a big thing. My dad used to drive us all the way from South Bombay to Juhu for Naturals. And we had 4 ice cream parlours in our lane.

There was a lot more community bonding too. Children were schooled ( or at least educated about) their religion. Many a times it was by private tutors. Educated people were religious to a certain degree in the 90s. Masjids and Mandirs had more attendance from this section of the society. Also, there was a lot of interest in the practices of the others. Warkaris used to attend the Mahim Dargah. Lalbagcha raja was feted in a Muslim locality. These days most people find their own religion too much to stomach, and have no time/curiosity an dare I say tolerance whatsoever for other ideologies.

Children were multi lingual then. Having studied in a Parsi girls school for a while, I know exactly how Parsi gujju is different from Jain Gujju which is different from Bohri gujju which my moms side of the family speaks. Could mime any accent. Somewhere along the way I also picked up Marathi and Sindhi. And I was the norm. My 3 year old daughter, only speaks English and very rudimentary Hindi. As do most people she interacts with. I do not see her learning local languages. Children/Teenagers today are confined to social interactions within people from their class. They would join a class to learn Japanese/Spanish etc.

Edited May 5, 2017 by Mariyam

[Rajiv]

I for once used to think Bandra Pali Hill was the coolest ( my most evenings ), but ended up one evening to meet someone at Sophia college. Boy, I was impressed by the crowd and the teens waiting in their tie dye colored Maruti gypsies, convertible beetles and a lotus esprit

 

I am like vow, these guys gave some cash here - this was 1991

[Number]

OP expected to get some interesting untold stories about underworld but only got nostalgia-ridden posts.

Nice posts nonetheless. Giving good insights about one of the most fascinating cities social landscape now and then.

One thing I would like to ask is how often you guys could/can spot TV/B'wood celebrities ?

One of my friends who is working there for 2 years says in 2 years I could only get a selfie with Pooja Bedi

[Rajiv]

Living in Bandra, it was everywhere. Maryam would know too

 

I will share a funny post ( too tired to write now) and the title is "When I wore Pahlaj Nihalanis suit jacket and almost got caught"..look fwd to it 

[tweaker]

I never saw any celebrity as I was not interested in them.If there was añy shooting going on I was not interested in watching the shooting .

Many people were interested to work as crowd in the song picturisation.They were paid some 200 rupees on daily basis.

[Mariyam]

On 5/8/2017 at 1:18 PM, Rajiv said:

Living in Bandra, it was everywhere. Maryam would know too

 

I will share a funny post ( too tired to write now) and the title is "When I wore Pahlaj Nihalanis suit jacket and almost got caught"..look fwd to it 

Sanskari jacket?

 

You can't leave us hanging with a teaser. Come on! The story.

[Mariyam]

On 5/7/2017 at 7:27 AM, Number said:

OP expected to get some interesting untold stories about underworld but only got nostalgia-ridden posts.

Nice posts nonetheless. Giving good insights about one of the most fascinating cities social landscape now and then.

One thing I would like to ask is how often you guys could/can spot TV/B'wood celebrities ?

One of my friends who is working there for 2 years says in 2 years I could only get a selfie with Pooja Bedi

It depends on where you stay, whom you consider a celebrity and what kind of circles you move around in.

 

The thing I notice is that, most people of Mumbai wouldn't go crazy on seeing a celebrity. But people from other cities would be totally awed. Even those who have come to the city to work and have spent many a year here.

[MechEng]

On 07/05/2017 at 7:27 AM, Number said:

OP expected to get some interesting untold stories about underworld but only got nostalgia-ridden posts.

Nice posts nonetheless. Giving good insights about one of the most fascinating cities social landscape now and then.

One thing I would like to ask is how often you guys could/can spot TV/B'wood celebrities ?

One of my friends who is working there for 2 years says in 2 years I could only get a selfie with Pooja Bedi

During my initial years in Mumbai I lived in Juhu tara road, so every evening I would see Rakesh Roshan and his friends going for their walks at Juhu beach. I once saw Shahrukh Khan driving his Hyundai Terracan, again this was early 2000's. 

Edited May 10, 2017 by MechEng

[Rajiv]

On 5/9/2017 at 0:42 PM, Mariyam said:

Sanskari jacket?

 

You can't leave us hanging with a teaser. Come on! The story.

Vicky (his eldest son) was a close school friend. The family was originally in hotel/restaurant business and the movie scene came later, say around when we were in 6^th standard. His mom (a very well trained jockey) used to be invited for major school functions and she used to arrange small parties at their place for close friends and Vicky was pretty cool with loaning his bike, watching trials for movies etc.

Mother used to take us to Matheran, Lonavla trips as they enjoyed horse riding.  We met his dad only few times at home, but he knew us by face for sure

So basically, pretty close and you could ask him for anything. The year was around 1988-89 and I had to attend this grand wedding at Sun n Sand, I knew lot of girls were coming and generally guys in Bombay get away with shirt/trousers but this time I wanted a suit. I didn’t want to get one made that too in limited time, Vicky just pulled me to his dads closet and said pick one. I mean I could literally see Filmfare Awards type jackets lined up and luckily, he was not too large so one of his older Dak-Ching jacket just fit me right. I felt like a million bucks, and did roll lot of gagra choli’ed heads at the wedding.

Now I didn’t know that the wedding had their own filmi connection, so they invited the likes of Shakti, Dharmendra and as you know they don’t really stay at the weddings, just come for the crowd, few clicks and gone. Now, it just happened to be that Mr. Nihalani was accompanying Shatrughan (his close friend) together with Dharmendra and were strolling around the bar area

I happen to walk by and he caught my eye, and it was “Hello Uncle” – a one-liner still famous with my friends for this incident (so basically if anyone got caught smoking, dating and an uncle saw you, it was basically “Tera to Hello Uncle ho gaya”)

So, coming back to that 10 sec, eye to eye – he didn’t really say much, just smiled and stared at the jacket. It was nothing short of those movie scenes where a poor lover wants to impress his rich girlfriend’s family and borrows a suit from his Dhoni

The jacket was returned, that was the end of it but it was one of life’s most interesting episodes

Vicky now lives in Jaipur with his French wife and is a professional polo player. I can tell you that Mr. Nihalani wasn’t like he is perceived today with all the censorship's etc.

 

The only movie where first 2 sons starred in

 

Th 1st scene is obvious, the other one, it's his brother Chinni on the right

 

https://vid.me/BcJd

[narenpande1]

Most of the celebrities I have met in Mumbai were at the airport. I have bumped into the below:

 

1) Saw Jeetentra and Ekta Kapoor at the entrance of Autoriders showroom in Santa Cruz. Jeetendra got of white sclass Mercedes. White shirt and pant. White chappal. Rudraksh on wrists and neck. Ekta Kapoor looked like an effing retarded Sanyasan. Massive tika on forehead. Some *all clothes and perhaps 30 rings in both hands. This was back in 2000 when I was still in India 

 

2) Saw Dia Mirza and Aishwarya both at the CST Int airport around 2005. Stunning to say the least. Aishwarya was unreally beautiful back then. Dia looked like fairy. Was only a teen back then. Huge crush.

 

3) Saw Aditi Rao Hyadri 2 years back at Mumbai domestic airport. Next door girl looks. Nothing glamorous.

 

4) Saw Sanjay Kapoor ( Anil Kapoors younger brother) at CST Int airport to top his wife, last year. He looked like a star. Perhaps he is not very photogenic. 

[sandeep]

On 5/9/2017 at 3:45 PM, Mariyam said:

It depends on where you stay, whom you consider a celebrity and what kind of circles you move around in.

 

The thing I notice is that, most people of Mumbai wouldn't go crazy on seeing a celebrity. But people from other cities would be totally awed. Even those who have come to the city to work and have spent many a year here.

You always get that a lot from all the non-bombay aquaintances - you must see a lot of "movie stars", or some such line.   Most in Bombay wouldnt' care as much.  

[Rajiv]

On my last trip-  Goregaon was presented as the heavenly happening place with TV stars living everywhere. Goregaon to me was a place filled with truck smoke and uneven roads, and somewhere too far off from the suburbs, interesting how things change where flats in good bldgs cost over 3-4crore ( which would be unthinkable for that part )

[narenpande1]

20 minutes ago, Rajiv said:

On my last trip-  Goregaon was presented as the heavenly happening place with TV stars living everywhere. Goregaon to me was a place filled with truck smoke and uneven roads, and somewhere too far off from the suburbs, interesting how things change where flats in good bldgs cost over 3-4crore ( which would be unthinkable for that part )

Inorbit Mall, Oberoi Mall and mindspace BPO /call centers led to the surge. Tons of new high rises with rates starting at 20000/sq feet.

 

But certainly not heavenly/happening in comparison to Juhu and Bandra or even Lokhandwala. Those TV stars would not be able to afford Juhu or Bandra properties with their high maintenance fake lifestyles.

 

Outside the unaffordable South Mumbai, Bandra and Juhu will ALWAYS be the most coveted places. There is unimaginable old money there. 

[Vilander]

3 hours ago, narenpande1 said:

Aditi Rao Hyadri

i must say you have pretty good girl living next to your door.