‘Shaher Nahi Ye Hai Sannata, Roj rame chhe Aatapata’, this video was very popular in the decade of 1990s on Doordarshan’s Gujarati channel. I used to watch this video with great interest in 90s. Now when I bumped with this video in 2009, I couldn’t resist writing about that Amdavad and Today’s Amdavad(at least in this article, I would not write Ahmedabad).

The city of Amdavad has changed very much after this video.

In video you can see cars like Fiat, Ambassador and Contesa and two wheeler like Bajaj scooter and Kinetic Honda running on the roads of Amdavad. Today it’s almost past. There are dozens of varieties of car model available today. Color of rickshaws is black and yellow in the video but after the government made CNG gas rickshaw compulsory, now all rickshaws in Ahmedabad are Green and Yellow colored.

Also you can watch dry sand bed of river Sabarmati. Today the river is full of water from this bank to that bank, thanks to Narmada project and also due to one after another normal monsoon seasons.

Darpan circle is green today(not standing on asphalt as in video). Parking of bike just near Kankaria lake is past now as the lake front is no-vehicle-zone for last three years. A truck running on Amdavad road on day-time is another thing that has been a thing of past because for last some years, the police has banned entry of trucks and luxury buses in day-time inside the city. Old models of AMTS and ST buses are amusing. They have changed lot after this video.

That old house with iron sheet roof top on the western corner of Nehru bridge cross road has gone now. It was demolished some years back to construct a shopping centre called Sakar.

The Ellis bridge in its 100-year-old narrow and single-lane shape is also more or less a history. The video shows old narrow Ellis bridge, but now there are two new lanes on the both sides of this old original Ellis bridge(Swami Vivekananda bridge) functional.

The video lyrics tells that there are five bridges in the city but after this video, one more bridge came into existence between Chandranagar and Danilimda. One more bridge between Dudheshwar and Vadaj is 60% complete. In video, one old Kaka shows us Stock market of Amdavad. But after this video, the stock market shifted to Panjrapol-Polytechnic area in-front of Sahajanand college and contrary to old practice of ‘Lidha’ and ‘Didha’ shown in video, now stock market works on computer system. Somethings even relevant today are Fafda, Jalebi, tea shop, Pan no Gallo, roadside market of Tran Darwaja area, Kumbhar’s matla shop on road etc.

One notable thing shown in this video is Amdavad’s relation with curfew(thanks to frequent communal riots), but in recent years, this curfew has also become past. We never saw curfew in Amdavad after 2002. Today 8-year-old child in Amdavad does not know about curfew contrary to past when even five-year-child could tell about it with his experience. Another thing shown in this video is Gujarati TV serial industry. In late 80s and early 90s, before satellite TV advent, Amdavad Doordarshan was in its golden era. Many local TV stars, production units emerged and flourished in Amdavad in that era. Everything was wiped out after national TV and satellite channels came in to existence.

This video was conceptualized and directed by Dipak Bavaskar with cooperation of DECU(ISRO), HDFC, Piraji Sagra and Ahmedabad Electricity Limited(AEC) that is now Torrent Power thanks to Shankarsinh Vaghela who in a dubious deal sold majority shares of government run company AEC to Torrent when he was Chief Minister of Gujarat). The video features Gujarati TV stars of that era. The song was penned by well-known Gujarati poet Shri Chinu Modi. The music composer of this song was Shri Gaurang Vyas.