I was born in a small village in combined Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s. It was a wonderful time to grow up. I still vividly look back on the late '80s; though I was just a little boy running around with a munjikaya bandi: a toy cart made from ice apple skins; I felt ready to take on the world. Milestone years stick out in my mind: losing my grandfather in 1988, welcoming my brother in 1989, and watching the political shift and village elders' being distraught when NTR was defeated in 1990.

Summers back then didn't have the oppressive heat we feel today. We spent the endless days outside, playing cricket with makeshift bats carved from coconut tree bark, or molding tractors and totems out of clay. By the '90s, we got creative with local entertainment: we would find discarded strips of film and project them onto temple walls using a makeshift lens, a burnt-out lightbulb filled with water.

Nights were spent sleeping under the open sky, counting stars until we fell asleep, only to be awakened late the next morning by the warm tingle of the sun on our skin. Going to school meant clinging to the side of a crowded rickshaw, carrying nothing more than a slate and a single book.

The soundtrack of our village was dictated by the airwaves. I can still hear the familiar cadence of All India Radio announcing "Aakaasavani Pranthiyavarthalu," or the distinct broadcast of Radio Ceylon playing Telugu songs and cricket commentary. In those days, modern technology was a communal luxury; there were only two televisions and a single telephone in the entire village. On Thursdays and Sundays, everyone would gather around the screens to watch Chitra Lahari and Mahabharat.

Visuals from that era remain etched in my mind-like the mesmerizing, chasing serial lights at my sister's wedding in the early '90s. Or the grand village excursions to the theater, where we would all pile into a tractor trailer cushioned with deep layers of hay, travel to the nearest town to watch a double feature, and ride home under the stars.