Rustin Cohle’s famous line ‘Time is a flat circle’ holds meaning in ways more than one. It rings true in the sense that we have come a long way from what life used to be for our parents and those before them. But the dynamics of evolution repeat themselves and before we know it we become what we hated most in our parents.

Think about it the next time you see a five-year-old with a phone and say, ‘Ye bacche karte kya hain phone pe?!’

If you still don’t believe it’s a cycle then here are all the technologies of yesteryear we are seeking solace from.

1. Not only is Nokia 3310 relaunched, there are new, sleeker phones that do just what our dear old Nokia always did.

Nokia 3310’s relaunch got parents excited like teens over iPhone. Here’s a phone that served its purpose, had a tough battery life, and setting navigation a piece of cake. And god be damned, it just would not stop working. 

The Pop Daily

 2. The Light Phone, what seems like an innovation to make Nokia 3310 look Gen-y.

Imagine a phone that can only make and receive calls, text messages, and pretty much just that. But this one comes packaged like it’s walking the red carpet for basic phones. The Light phone is what happened when a basic phone got a makeover, the face changed but it’s the same on the inside.

Go Biz Next

If there are people out there who still smile when they see a cassette and a pencil together, our hearts go out to y’all. We have artists like Eminem, Kanye West, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber to thank for this, who released their songs in cassette form. So here we are, at the threshold of the resurgence of an era.

Fashion And Action

4. Vinyl records and their brilliant quality will still grace us with its existence.

Heroes of pop, like the Arctic Monkeys, took a bold step in the year 2009 and released vinyl records of their single. We have come this far with technology but it’s said that nothing has been able to reproduce the subtlety and quality of the vinyl.

Mixgrill

5. They might call it new, but we know our lovely leaf plates have been there for quite some time now.

Restaurants and households in Kerala have served food on banana leaves for the longest time. Let’s not forget the paani puri and papdi chat and other street food served on leaf plates all over the country. It might be common for us folks in India, but many abroad are celebrating it as the next big thing in recycling. Pfft!

Garimpo

 6. Miswak is the new international trend in oral health, and it’s been our ancestral stronghold.

Most of us 90s people have been greeted with the sight of an elderly person using a twig to brush their teeth. The practice isn’t even a bygone for us desis, but for the rest of the world, it’s this absolute new thing that everybody is bonkers about. A comeback, if you may, ladies, and gentlemen!

This Is A Toothbrush

This little box has was how 90s teens got addicted to music, without parents complaining about the noise ‘their kind of music made’. It’s what accompanied people on the rides to school, the walks to tuition classes, and consoled us on hopeless nights when the syllabus seemed as mighty as the universe. This beauty is back.

Thinking Tech

8. Fountain pens are back and they’re making good handwriting cool again!

Many recall this with ink stains on school uniforms and books; then there are those who save a fountain pen like a prized souvenir. Parker, which has manufactured fountain pens since 1888 has claimed a resurgence in fountain pens for reasons unknown. Personally, we think it’s because it just feels so good.

Witty Feed

9. Pac-Man still eats everything on its way, but with a lot of fancy add ons.

Oldest memories with this game are on the desktop, eating away whatever came in the way. As it turned thirty-five, the game was redesigned and launched for Android and iOS users. This version has the added element of Pac-Man having to get to the top of the screen before the glitching numbers catch up.

Android Quality Index

10. Polaroid cameras, because your personal pictures on the internet is really not the safest place.

Things did not go very well for quite a few celebs when their iCloud was hacked and many personal images leaked. You know what a vintage polaroid does? Keeps all your secret/personal pictures to itself. If this isn’t gold, we don’t know what is. 

Wall Paper Pulse

11. Tamagotchi is back, and the pets you have to take care of this time at least look like pets.

This was the experience of having a pet, without having one. The game was to keep the pet alive. A blob-like creature on the screen that was demanding, needed attention, cleaning, and it got really annoying if you were at school. They’d die before break if you did not feed them. This game got an upgrade where pets look like definite animals.

Bloter

12. Beepers and pagers, because trusting the battery life of your smart phone has never been a wise decision.

This technology possibly never left because many patriots in the medical world chose them over smartphones. It’s not an aversion to anything new. Pagers and beepers save a whole lot of money and they need no charging, the kind of loyalty our smartphones will never learn.

Keywords King

13. Typewriters now come with the backspace option, the technology is yet to be introduced the launchpad ‘bad life decisions’. 

These were sacred. Typewriters, like life, never backspaced, which is why they were and still are considered one of the truest forms of writing. It’s back, with a backspace button and many other modern options. 

Dondebon

14. Fax machines may take a tad longer than e-mails, but its safety is something many have vouched for.

If there’s a hack-resistant way of sending out a message in this day and age, it’s this. The fax machine made its comeback last year because, well, we learned our lessons well. Also, faxed signature are accepted worldwide and what’s easier than writing out a crisp message and shoving it in the fax.

The Telegraph

So here we are, decked in the glory of all things apparently ‘new’, yet basking in the warmth of our ‘something old’. Time is a flat circle.