They were 90's kids grown up watching movies which portrayed romantic love stories of modern India. The 90’s was an era when the hero and heroine fought with societal norms to live together. It was different from the 70’s when marriages were decided by parents and children had no say in the choice. But 90’s was surely better than todays generation because maybe it was last generation to believe in true love, todays generation has started to hunt for instant sexual gratification rather than strong commitment and true love.
The sad relaity is -The 70’s generation is not able to believe what is happening in today's relationships. The 90’s generation is not able to manage what is happening in today's relationships. The new generation is not able to understand what is happening in today's relationships.
As 90’s kids they held all the characteristic traits of a 90’s kid should hold like- playing with cassette video games like Contra and Mario. The first game on PC – Roadrash. The most luxurious car Maruti 800. Using Telephone and its long spring wire to talk to relatives. Playing snakes game on that Nokia mobile. Eating Boomer chewing gum and drinking Rasana. Listening to slow radio with parents during light cuts. Using camera with fixed number of pictures in a roll. Time pass food – peppy and uncle chips and our evergreen Parle-G with tea! Cofee was rare back then. When windows file transfer of pages flying from one folder to another took ages to complete. Cable network before dish antennas for our television sets. Playing lagori, lappa chuppi, sakhli, and beyblade too. Using colgate tooth powder. Watching shaktiman, shaka laka boom boom, Bob the builder, Oswal, Takeshis-castle, Powerpuff girls and also DD NEWS.
Talking about romance every 90’s kid must have passsd through some of these romantic adventures – back then no mobile phones were given at young age unlike now! So the boy would SMS from his dad’s phone on the girl’s elder sister’s mobile at a very specific time and within 2 minutes the SMS used to be deleted on both sides. Then the Samsung and Nokia phones were the norm then! That too maximum 1-2 sms in a day or it would go out of budget and no calls at all, only missed calls at the max because family was always around. Then came cyber cafe and Orkut and somehow chatting evolved fast into multiple messages. Then came the facebook era and internt at home now chatting phenomenon got matured. Now we have whatsapp and even video call ! Thus a 90’s kid has passed through a long spectrum of communication technology to sustain romance. These things have made up the characteristics of people born in 90’s decade.
And just like any other 90’s kids – story of Paras and Riya was love at first sight in their second year of engineering. Paras a multi-talented and sincere student of Mechanical engineering branch and Riya the typical mix of scholarly and pretty student who was from Computer engineering branch.
It was during their annual sports festival ‘enthusiom’ – semifinals of football match between mechanical vs computer engineering. 10 minutes were left for final wistle and score was 3-3. A player got injured from mechanical branch by a rough attack from computers. Till the time he stood back up all players took a drinks break and that’s when Paras saw Riya. His eyes got fixed at her as he was sipping water. She was talking to her friends. Suddenly the refree blew whistle to resume the game.
Paras was the goal keeper for mechanical and he was the best goalkeeper any team could have. He played very well throughout the tournament. Now, last 5 minutes were remaining for the game to end, scores still 3-3. Computers made an attacking move with 4 players entering into defense zone of mechanical . The defenders of mechanical somehow tried to stop the attack. The ball got to a defender of mechanical but he had 3 computer attackers in front of him. He thought he can’t kick ahead because it will be blocked by one of computers player, only two minutes remained and it was very important for both the teams to win this match to reach the finals. The only option he had was to pass back to goalkeeper Paras.
The crowd stratted to go mad cheering for their departments and in that noise Paras heard a lovely musical note. It was Riya cheering (for computers). She was nearly at an angle of forty degrees on right side of Paras and his eyes slowly turnd to her side and at the same time his team player pased the ball from his left side to him, which Paras had no clue of. The scene formed a perfect equilateral triangle from areal view at one corner Riya at other corner Paras's team player passing the ball back and Paras at the centre. The ball came towards him and as the cheering of Riya was increasing Paras could not hear shouts from his team members to look at the coming ball and ball passed by him and went inside the goal post behind him.
Own goal !!!!!!!
Paras got back to senses on listening the sound of whistle just to see refree giving goal signal to computers. He looked at his team members all were looking at him, even the opponents were looking at him, the entire crowd was looking at him, Riya was looking at him. He didn’t understand why everyone was looking at him. He looked back to see ball inside goal !
After 10 seconds of of shock for everyone the computer department started celebration. All the mechanical players were sitting on the ground sobbing on their loss and their supporters in the stands were in shock. Then the formalities of exchanges of “well played” went on for some time. Paras knew he had to give an explanation of what had happened in the last minute to his teammates and he was ready to take on the firing in return. It was heartbreaking for himself too to lose this way as they all had practised for so long and played so well throughout the tournament.
But in midst of all this he saw Riya walking towards him. He was standing still and silent, she came and said “You played well throughout the tournament, and it is fine now you guys still have many other games in the festival. Sometimes it’s just badluck, best of luck for next time.” and she shook hands with Paras and stared walking back. Paras was silent all the time with a confused smile stuck on his face. He didn’t utter a word, his brain was trying to compile so much of information together.
While Riya was walking back her friend Shruti asked her “You never really talk to boys by yourself how come you went to him? And by my girly intuitive power I knew you were blushing from inside while talking to him” to which Riya said “Well it's nothing like that, everyone knows about Paras in college about how good he is in studies as well as other festival activities. I just took an opportunity to wish him luck it’s how you must treat your competitors in the festival when you win so they too don’t lose hope.” She winked at Shruti and blushed. Shruti said I think you are hoping for something else" and she winked back too.