The Golden Era of Dr.IR and Dr.SPB

[al_gates]

To start with, "Ashoka Plaza" , a shopping complex right next to the bus stand where there was this music shop that played terrific music. There was a cassette disti on 1st floor and the ground floor had City Color Lab that gave me fantastic pictures. (Many of my friends recommended IAB, Indian Art Buerau at x-cut road for prints but I loved this place that gave bright output and one of my pictures of sooryOdhayam at Palakkad was such a lovely one that I used it as a greeting card 100's of times). It was fun to give the Konica roll (was called Sakura during college days and we used to buy in Trichy burma bazAr and get one hour prints in the Sevana hotel) and wander in the Gandhipuram area before getting the prints

"Wander" means, spend time in the cassette shops, sometimes buy clothes, visit one or other of Annapoorna's in the area (one right in bus stand, one in the entrance of x-cut road, one in lachchumi complex...well, x-cut road + lachchumi complex deserve a separate post), have tea / thEngA bun / bun-butter etc in one of the tea-shops with music etc. What a simple life, carefree and full of fun those days! I still remember one tea-shop close to Thiruvalluvar state bus stand that had such a classic sweet-bun served with butter and 'iLamai idhO idhO' for Dec 31 night Close to the aarvee / amaravathi hotel...

I cant remember Ashoka Plaza, but I do remember Singapore Plaza which had the weird address of '333 cross cut road'. I dont know the photo labs in that road as I was too small to dabble in cameras then. But it is news to me that the cross cut road IAB was there in 1986 itself. For me the most important landmark there was Vasantham Stores. I could never understand why this guy named his store like a furniture/vessel store when you could pick up any sort of school/college textbook there. It was more of a stationary shop-cum-Higginbothams. (And then the bus route #36 was often my preferred route to gandhipuram...I often took that bus as I was very excited that a conductor on the bus looked like Kapil Dev!)

but anyway, the main reason I'm writing is I was hauled up at a relative's place that very month you described. It was great freedom from me, as for that one month, I was able to move from the nasty-no-seat School bus, to catchign a town bus to school(like the Big boys). The travel from DB Road to Hopes was enjoyable as I would usually get a place to sit. I dont rememebr the route number but it would get really crowded soon and my only option was to look out the window, and that route had a ton of cinema posters. I couldnt help noticing from the posters that apparently there was one guy who had all the garish megasize posters and he seemed to have ridiculously insane luck with the ladies. Wherever I looked, he was there and onto something... This dumb kid didnt know that it was the bloody CM

Dec 86 was the time I completed my first novel(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man-Eater_of_Malgudi) and I often spent time on the terraces with a transistor listening to the Ind-SL cricket series. The last day of that year, I saw the end of this game:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin...tch/63450.html

Gavaskar batted low down the order and hammered 74 off 79 balls to set up the declaration, going berserk with some crazy six hitting. Later on the day, Ratnayake was caught off his pads and Mendis tried to hammer his way out, with 6 fours in his 38. Late that night, DD featured a program Images-86, an hour long review of the days events, after Uday Bir Saran Das' 9:50pm Eng news.

App, I should have joined you for that late night tea