How many times have you rolled your eyes as your grandparents look wistfully into the distance and recall “the good old days”?
Those were the days indeed! No mobile phones, no internet, no social media, none of the modern gadgets and facilities that make life so much easier.
But one viral thread on Twitter has made thousands of people in India genuinely nostalgic for those times.
Alt News is an Indian fact-checking website. One of its co-founder’s tweets as SamSays. Earlier this week, she started trending in India by tweeting a thread about her late aunt.
Mehrunissa Najma died 15 years ago, in 2006. After her death, some of her things were put in storage and stayed there all these years, languishing in a basement somewhere. Recently an album from that basement made its way to SamSays.
Najma was a prominent Indian film fan, and despite her mother’s displeasure, would spend all her free time writing long letters to all the film stars of the day.
And the album SamSays found was filled with replies those film stars had written and sent to her, along with their autographed pictures.
Shammi Kapoor, known as the Elvis Presley of India, wrote in English, “I am happy to learn that I am your favorite star.” Dharmendra, one of the most prolific actors in Indian film history, sent a handwritten reply in Hindi. Mother India star Sunil Dutt’s letter was written in chaste Urdu.
The list includes pretty much every big film star of the day: Kamini Kaushal, Sadhna, Asha Parekh, Saira Banu, Tabassum, Surayya, Rajender Kumar, Raj Kumar.
Imagine one of us writing a letter to Shah Rukh Khan or Tom Cruise and receiving a handwritten reply! Maybe your grandma’s been right all along – those indeed were the days!
