Talking of comebacks, why does life keep bringing back something we have always tried to get rid of? Rather, why aren’t we ever surprised with things we’ve wept copiously over when they left our lives. The list below is bizarre, but so are our desires, hence keep reading.

1. Final year of college 

The cursed batch of 2021 would rant all their lives about how the lockdown robbed them of their treasured final year and dragged them into an online mess. How frustrating it is to realise that one day we woke up, packed our bags, took a train to college, and had no clue it was our last day. Could someone please turn the time machine around for us? Oh, but final exams aren’t a part of the plan, right? Nope, they aren’t.

2. Good ol’ 9XM days 

Your Spotify playlist can never match the exhilaration of patiently waiting for the next song in the queue to play. And if you didn’t grow up watching chhote bade on 9XM, your childhood is allegedly pointless. Not that we have unsubscribed from those music channels, but neither our schedules nor the songs of today compel us to do so.

3. Pre-lockdown body 

When binge-watching and eating became not a habit but a lifestyle, increasing a kilo or two (or ten) was inevitable. I miss not wrestling with my own jeans to simply fit into them. Argh, bring those days back. 

4. Will to have a social life 

It’s unfathomable I’m the same person who, 3 years ago, made spontaneous weekend plans and didn’t mind striking up a conversation with people I never met before. I surely came out of lockdown but my extrovert self is still lurking behind the locked doors of the room. 

5. Akshay Kumar’s 2000s comedy dramas

Why do we don’t feel exhausted watching and re-watching the same 2000s comedy films? Because they don’t make those anymore. Surprising those comedy flicks even had the finest of love tracks that even romantic movies did not. Remember Labon ko from Bhool Bhulaiyya? While Akshay Kumar has departed from ‘his’ genre, all we can do is sit and lament over the loss.

6. Imran Khan’s realm of rom-coms

The unrivalled age of rom-com when Imran Khan breathed life into characters (who felt absolutely unreal) is what is missing from the rom-com genre of Bollywood films today. Those films might have not made you fall in love but in the idea of love. It’s sad to realise that the next gen will never grow up watching the kind of films that shaped our personalities.

7. Cadbury Bytes 

Life went straight downhill as the tiny crunchy ‘bytes’ of bliss left a void in our tummies. They say good things are often taken early from us, but this one was brutally snatched! NGL, each one of it had more chocolate fills than all the chips in a Lays’ packet combined.

8. Takeshi’s Castle  

Watching people tumble into mud puddles on Takeshi’s Castle was my guilty pleasure. I felt seen while watching people dashing and collapsing as they completed those challenges since that’s precisely how I live my life. It’s annoying how I can no longer watch it when I need it the most. Or wait, I have some news.

On a scale of 1-10, the urge to want them back in life is f*cking 11.