Nostalgia is like cinnamon powder of the emotional realm. It’s present in everything sweet and saleable today—from resto-bar decors to photo filters to memes (“Aao kabhi haveli pe” is the latest in the same series in which Alok Nath’s Sanskaari Babuji was once a rage) to every second Hindi film remixing yet another song from the 1990s. In all this sepia-tinted violence of marketing buzzwords, is there any space or need even to talk about that seemingly unremarkable chunk of time in the history of our cinema and television? Still—this is a question I am tired of asking myself—what is it about the 1990s that refuses to leave us, the children of that era? (By children of that era, I broadly mean those born post-Emergency but pre-liberalization; boys and girls who gained the visceral sense of body, mind, and the world in the 1990s.) Of course, it was the time of coloured TV, DD Metro, cable channels, a new sensibility in cinema, and it was the time when Baba Sehgal entered our lives.

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