This story is submitted for the blogging contest by my mother. Read and enjoy:
Here is my story - Oshin
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Oshin.. This is a story of a Japanese Girl by the name OShin.. It was a weekly episode that ran in DD Nationals during the 1990s.. It portrays the life of Oshin from the time she was a little girl all the way until she becomes an old woman. The hardships she encountered in Japan, how she grows up adapts to various hardships never giving up.. Unknowing to me this Oshin was deeply etched into my memory and I have thought about her many times in many circumstances.. either as a sign of beauty for a girl or a sign of a hard working young girl.
My memory of this show is also the beautiful village of Japan, wooden houses and wooden buckets using which Oshin fills water from flowing canals, of the beautiful kimonos and hair dressers from Japan. This show had given me an image of Japan that I carried of a traditional oriential world.. until the internet showed a different Japan of Tokyo full of lights, sky scrappers, fast trains and very fast life. Many japanese movies I never saw but glimpsed while browsing were either fight movies or some crazy light flashing karaoke disco noisy types.
In recent times Japan is a Robotic Capital and Electronics capital & always remembered for extremely almost robotic efficient work force eliminating all mudi mura (waste) kaizen Kanban lean sigma workers..
Through all this and through Ninja Hatori cartoons that I had gotten to love, Japan didnt trigger the memory of Oshin any longer. Say Japan, I either remember the cute Pepper Robot or sushi or Ninja or Blockchain or even one of my first client Kingling Syu .. but never Oshin.
But memory of Oshin flashed back when I saw the cute little grand mother of Doraemon in a beautiful animated movie 'Stand By me 2'. It made me time travel to doordarshan days and got me those flashes of the wooden houses and wooden buckets and that girl Oshin as a little one, young one and old woman.
Now it intrigued me.. How do i spell Oshin.. I searched "Ocean Doordarshan serial" and got no right hits.. then "Doordharshan Japanese serial" no hits again.. And then a search on "Japanese Serial Ocean" lead me to Oshin a tiny youtube clip and then a euraka feeling of seeing that familiar girl after so many decades. I do remember my father loved that serial too and he always commented at how well it was taken.
And then I go to Wikipedia and read the full story of Oshin.. I just had to know..
And I read the synopsis.. a biography of Oshin.. A beautiful fictional tale painted by Sugako Hashida that it almost felt like reading a full book & I sooo look forward to see 270 long episode series if it ever comes into Youtube or Netflix or Amazon prime..
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