Ok, so this might seem like pictures ripped straight out of Google, or product placement ads, but they're pictures I took myself from different departmental stores. My childhood was filled with SNACKS. When I moved back to India after ten years, and saw these same lables 'Dairy Milk,' 'Kurkure,' 'Maggi,' and 'Amul,' it just brought back a ton of childhood memories. Cadbury was and always will be the ultimate chocolate for me. Yes, I've eaten Hershey's, Gems, Mars, Snickers, and all of that good stuff, but nothing like Cadbury's Dairy Milk. I would reward myself with those Rs. 5 Cadbury chocolate bars, every time I scored a 100 on a test, or listened to my Mom. Good times...
The most unique thing in Indian convenience stores I've noticed are those long strings of packages of chips, decorating the storefront. Seeing them now I am reminded of the days I used to rip off Kurkure packages and beg my Mom to buy them for me. The spicy chips are the ones for me, even to this day. But the variety of chips from Lays, Kurkure, Cheetoh's is astonishing, something that I missed greatly when I was away from India.
I remember running home from school, and begging Mom to make Maggi noodles each time. No matter how many days in a week I'd had it, I would NEVER get tired of it. In the US, I used to eat Top Ramen, but it was nothing close to the taste of Maggi noodles. One of the best things of coming back to India was eating authentic Maggi noodles, the irreplaceable snack. I still prefer my Maggi noodles to be as dry as possible, with no extra veggies.
Amul, as all us media students have already discussed, is the pinnacle of India's successful brands. So seeing anything Amul nowadays brings back to those delicious days of munching on Amul cheese slices. I remember I used to steal cheese slices from the fridge, and eat 2-4 each day, even when I was told not to indulge in more than 1! Of course, I didn't listen, and one day ended up falling so sick, and vomited it all out :/
The multitude of Indian snacks is something like no other, and revitalizes my childhood even more.
5 comments:
:-) Interesting thought. Bachpan ke Yaadein taaza kar di
Hey Dutt,
Does look like an ad for products :D
Though it makes sense as story I think each image individually doesn't evoke much feeling for me.
Dutt:
What a waste of effort! You could've easily downloaded these images from the net, no? How do you take ownership of an image? How do you make it yours, and only yours? Take a look at, Srishti's set of images, for example. And then we'll talk.
Brenna:
What was "interesting" about the thought? This exercise is as much about figuring how to express thought "visually". And Tejasvi is right - they look like advertising images which do not evoke any feeling.
- Ajay
I too agree with Brenna and Tej.. althought to some extent these images do remind me of my childhood but do not evoke any emotion
Thanks all for the comments!
Although this may seem like a lazy effort, I went to particular stores and located these items specifically to categorize my childhood set of memories.
This may not relate to most people here, but when I was away from India for a long period of time, snacks were the main things I missed. I even have shots of all Indian snacks I enjoyed the most on my FB profile, after I came back here. Because that was something I did not get back there!
I understand that the images may seem very generic, but if you all read my explanations at length, you might understand what it means to me.
I have specific stories for these images as I've explained, but will keep your feedback in mind, talking about how to make these images my own.
--Arushi D
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