RIP 1990-1999
• Your mornings started off with Mustansar Hussain Tarar (better known as Chacha Jee). There would be 5 minutes of exercise, 5 minutes of cartoons and then you had to go to school
Imran Khan• Evenings on STN/NTM were the highlight of your day
• You played Kings in school, the game where the first person to yell “Kings” would try to step on someone's foot. Then that person would try to step on someone else's foot and so on and forth
Sadia Imam• Playground feminism took form in the shape of Queens (essentially the same thing as Kings) and Kish, that weird jumping game that involved two teams and a loop of elastic. The loop was usually made out of a few shalwars worth of elastic tied together, snuck secretly because your mothers would get sick of you wasting a perfectly good roll of elastic
• Aamir Zaki and Salman Ahmed were the coolest guitarists
Junaid Jamshed• The Jetsons, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Captain Planet were all dubbed in Urdu
• Programming the VCR was our thing, since anyone older couldn't understand how to do it
Amna Haq• MCC (Music Channel Charts) and VJ (Video Junction) were the hottest shows on TV
• We only played cricket or football, depending on which World Cup was being played at the time
Alpha Bravo Charlie• You remember Shahbaz Ahmad, better known as "the man with the electric heels", who led Pakistan to victory at the the 1994 World Cup of Hockey
• The only coed sport that was ever played in school was Dodge Ball (or as we all called it "Dodge The Ball") and girls were actually pretty good at it
Pakistan goes Nuclear• You played games like Dark Room, Tilo Express, Oonch Neech, Chor-Sipahi and Chupan Chupai
We are the champions of the World!• Jansher Khan and Jehangir Khan were the greatest
92 Nissan Sunny• You decided conflicts not by Rock-Paper-Scissors but instead by Pugan-Pugaai, In Pin Safety Pin or Akar-Bakar-Bambay-Bo
The game we all grew up with• 5 words: Assoo-Panjoo-Haar-Kabootar-Doli
Hadiqa Kiani• Playing on the street was an actual activity, and mind you a healthy one! (We were the last generation to hold this great childhood tradition alive)
Motorola Dynatac• "Pehla blade karta hai chun, doosra chunn, teesra cha cha cha chein" means something
Uncle Sargam & Maasi Museebatay• Backstreet's Back, Get Down and Quit Playing Games With My Heart were the first English songs you became madly obsessed with (surprisingly for the boys)
Junoon• We had the best team ever playing at the 1999 Cricket World Cup with Shoaib Akhtar, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis bowling
Top Pops• You we're amazed when Pakistan reached the finals of the 1999 World Cup against Australia (only for them to screw it up in the end)
25 pesa• Even before the Final against Australia was over, everyone was blaming Pakistan for match fixing and Saeed Anwar's grip change
Duck Hunt Gun• Shahid Afridi was a "Laparoo" and a "Batta"
• Recording songs off the radio onto cassettes was the only way to "download music"
Fakhr-e-Alam• You were suddenly informed that the letter ‘H’ was no longer pronounced as "ach" but rather "aitch"
Awaz• Anyone owning a real Barbie or Hot Wheels was a source of envy and admiration
Shoaib Akthar "Rawalpindi Express"• "Travel Guide of Pakistan" on PTV made you fall madly in love with the Northern Areas (now called Gilgit-Baltistan :D)
Junoon• “Bil Patori Naasa Chori Aadhi Mithi Aadhi Kori I’m Sorry I’m Sorry” means something to you and so does “ZAAAAAYYYMEEENAAAA!” and “Mein Kon Hoon, Mein Kya Karoon, Mein Kiss Ko Khaaon” and “Ulloo Ulloo Hello, Ulloo Ulloo Hello"
• You wished you were Imran or Moattar from Ainak Waala Jin
• You remember dancing on the streets when Pakistan won the 1992 Cricket World Cup
• You went psycho when you bought Super Nintendo and played games like Super Mario Brothers, Street Fighter and later on Mortal Combat
• You had nightmares about Bil Patori and Haamoon Jadoogar
• Transformers, Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry, Popeyes and G.I.JOE. mean something to you
• You drank Frost Juice with Super Crisps and when you were done, you’d chuck the juice box on the floor and jump on it to scare everybody - mostly the girls
• Your favourite chocolate bar was "Jubilee" and "Panda" was your favourite ice cream
• You remember the movie Titanic being released and how the song "My heart will go on" by Celine Dion became a cult hit (...and *shrugs* it still is!)
• Idiot, Shut Up or Badtameez was your first cuss word
• There was never a line at the canteen. Instead everyone drove the canteen wala mad by screaming at the top of their lungs
• You were cool if you could finish a whole pack of Crunchies or Slanties without showing any signs of weakness, including drinking water afterwards
• You picked out only the chips from your mom’s Nimco
• "Puraani Jeans" by Ali Haider is still an awesome song
• You remember the invention of online chatrooms, and thought it was the most coolest thing ever (remember mIRC?)
• You remember when Pizza Hut, McDonalds and KFC opened in Pakistan and would dress up extra nice to go eat there
• You remember RC Cola and how no one liked it
• It was taboo for guys to drink Miranda or Fanta because it was a "girls drink"
• May 28th 1998 - a day forever etched into our memories. Thank you Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan you'll always be our hero
• You idolized Imran Khan even though he was retired when you were 2 or 3, and wiped your face with your Pepsi bottle or Frost juice because he did it in that TV commercial
• Wasim Akram's famous TV commercial "mein cigarette nahi peeta" made half your generation vow to never smoke (that half just missed out on good stuff)
• If you were late to class, you had to ask your professor "Maam/Sir may I come in?” before entering a class, and then you had to stand up to answer questions during the entire lecture
• Cordless phones were the coolest things
• You went crazy when your dad bought his first ever mobile, and you wouldn't shut up about it to your friends
• You carried around a cordless phone in your bag or pocket pretending it was a mobile phone, because heck, they both looked the same back then didn’t they?
• You loved eating TOP POPS!
• "Bakra Qistoun Par" was your favourite stage show
• You grew up watching wrestlers like Bret Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior
• You also remember WWF being interesting to watch back then (it sucks now and it's called WWE)
• You begged your parents for a walkman and then bought tapes of Junaid Jamshed, or if you were really cool, Junoon
• You remember Fakhr-e-Alam hosting "Top Ten" on NTM and his “Bhangra Rap” was always #1
• #2 was “Jaadoo Ka Charagh” by Awaz, #3 was “Dohlna” by Shehzad Roy, #4 was “Mann De Moaj” by Hadiqa Kayani (the only cool female singer in Pakistan) and that was her only song for a long time, untill she sang "Dupatta Mera Malmal Ka”
• You were really sad when Awaz split up. Later you took sides between Haroon and Faakhir, and if you liked one you had to hate the other
• You remember celebrating when they changed the weekends to Saturday and Sunday because it meant Friday was a half day
• You remember crying if you were older because school would make you come on Saturday for a full day anyway
• You played SEGA Mega Drive and later on got SEGA Genesis
• You loved watching Elf, Family Matters, Thunder Cats, Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Camp Candy and wanted to be like him
• You remember the Nintendo game where you had to shoot ducks with an actual gun-shaped joystick and thought it was the most amazing thing ever
• Your life was never the same again when your first Windows 95 was set up in your house
• You played Dave 1 and thought level three was the hardest thing in the world. Then you upgraded to Lion King (probably from a Power Games CD bought out in the street)
• You shafted Polka Ice Cream when Walls became popular. And yes, admit it, you used to wait for the Ice Cream wala in the afternoon and bought Paddle Pops from him
• Walls wasn't as good as the Challi wala (end there were rumors that people loved them so much because there was chars in the masala)
• Crinkle Chips and Churan Chatni mean something to you
• The boys watched Captain Majid (some daring girls did too) and the girls watched Jem (so did some guys for that matter, and hid their interest under the pretext of making fun of their sisters)
• Cartoon Network showed good stuff like Johnny Bravo and Johnny Quest before crap like Cow and Chicken ruined everything
• You had Kutti (pinkie finger) with your enemies and Sulli (index+middle finger) with your friends
• Our idols were either the guys from Alpha Bravo Charlie or the guys from Teen Bata Teen
• It's copy, rubber and dustbin. Or rather, "duss-bin" while desk was once "dex"
• Your childhood was over when they forced you to stop using pencils and start using fountain pens. And you always made a mess filling the ink
• There was no GEO TV to lie to the nation everyday
• You wanted to be on the Crystal Maze, The Legends of the Hidden Temple
• The coolest clapping games were Cham Cham Cham, O Pillar, Zig Zag Zoo
• You were on the top of the food chain if you were made monitor (and you very easily abused the power too, by chucking chalk and dusters at people)
• Sit, Stand, Murghi and sitting in the "Bad Kid Section" was the usual punishment if you misbehaved in school and the good girls would sit with the bad boys in a vain attempt to civilize them
