Do you remember life before the internet?
Life before the internet was wild honestly.
.
We used to disappear for six hours
and nobody thought we were kidnapped.
.
People knocked on doors directly.
DIRECTLY.
No “hey are you home?” text.
Just sudden human appearance.
Terrifying times.
.
Phone numbers lived inside our brains.
Now I forget OTPs
while still reading them.
.
If someone used the landline too long,
the whole family became emotionally involved.
.
And downloading?
There was no downloading.
Either the song came on the radio
or destiny said no.
.
We had one computer in the house
kept in the most public area possible
like it was under government surveillance.
.
Google wasn’t there,
so confident wrong answers survived for years.
One uncle could lie peacefully forever.
.
Summer vacations felt endless then.
We drank Rasna,
came home before streetlights,
and thought the moon followed our scooter.
.
Cartoons arrived once a day
and missing them felt like heartbreak.
.
We waited for birthday cards,
shared one earphone like it was true love,
and rewound cassette tapes with pencils
like unpaid interns.
.
Photos were blurry,
candids were accidental,
and nobody stopped eating
to take pictures of the food first.
.
Also…
we met people without stalking them first.
No bio.
No highlights.
No “link in profile.”
Just pure risk and bad judgment.
.
And somehow friendships felt longer,
conversations felt slower,
and evenings felt bigger.
.
People laughed louder,
visited more,
sat together without checking notifications every seven seconds,
and love felt less performative somehow.
.
Now we have high-speed internet,
low battery anxiety,
three passwords forgotten daily,
and the attention span of a confused mosquito.
.
But honestly…
for a world with no Wi-Fi,
it connected people surprisingly well. ✨
.
—Rajeshwari🧿💕
© Nihshabd by Rajeshwari. All Rights Reserved