Music to my ears

Every time the cleaning bug bites, I return to that shelf whose contents have been transported across cities and continents decades ago. They are barely used these days, but the memories associated with them are still vivid. Yet again I find myself transported back in time, revisiting and reliving those memories and yet again, the contents on that shelf are spared from being banished to a box in the garage!

The said shelf carries a collection of audio cassettes that's a labor of love. Growing up in the age of no internet and no telephone and just Doordarshan on TV, my earliest memory of music is the songs coming from the radio on "Aakasavani". When I stayed with my grandparents, it was a ritual to listen to the Telugu film songs airing on the radio at 9AM promptly. Those are the songs I credit with enhancing my Telugu vocabulary and having left an indelible impression on my young mind. Songs that years later made me seek out and watch the movies they are from. Songs such as Chinukula Raali that on the first listen I thought was the most romantic song ever (I still think so), only to be utterly disappointed by the tragic movie. Songs such as Aakulo Aakunai, that have made me understand the beauty of words and forever made me a lyrical person.

Then came the days of me living in the hostel for my undergrad, where I was shown the world of Hindi music. Though I had listened to Bollywood music before that, and had known Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, and Asha Bhosle (who didn't know them in India?), hostel days and friends that came there from all over India exposed me to a whole new catalog of music. This new discovery of a vast world of music coincided with the rise of pop music in India and me getting a Sony Walkman. 

Thus began the innumerable trips to Aziz music studio - a tiny shop that could barely fit two people and had huge binders with a whole lot of movie songs listed. Sweating profusely in that store with no air or ventilation and parting with a good chunk of my pocket money, I would pore over those binders of Hindi and Telugu music and write down the list of songs I wanted to be recorded onto my audio cassette. Whether it was a 60 minute or 90 minute tape, I had to write down the songs down to the last second. Nothing could be randomly chosen by the shop guy just to fill the space. He was given strict instructions to not make his own choice, but to instead leave a bit of the tape empty if need be. Kishore Da's songs had to be divided and curated into different collections - his sad songs could absolutely not be mixed with his lively, joyful or romantic songs. Same was the case with Lataji's songs. There was a mood associated with every tape that couldn't be messed with! 

When A.R Rahman burst onto the scene, there was an entire side of a tape devoted just to his Chaiya Chaiya song to go in a loop. I kept going across Hindi and Telugu and reaching back in time trying to capture every song that I had ever listened to and thought was good. Sometimes, reading the song names in the binders, I had to take a chance on some of the unknown ones. If it didn't fit the mood of that tape or if I didn't like the song, I would go back to the store and write down another list to get the tape rewritten. Such was the level of obsession in ensuring that every cassette was just perfect! Mind you, getting the perfect tape was no easy task...sometimes there would be a song I'd listen to on the radio or TV, or watch in a movie, and would have to hold on to it and wait for other songs that would go well with it to get it on a tape.

Music has, of course, evolved since the 90's. Tapes gave way to CDs, songs in mp3 format could be downloaded onto CDs and USB drives, then iPod revolutionized music and replaced the walkman and discman. And all of that gave way to music at your fingertips on the phone. Now even as I have countless apps that let me create playlists as I please, and the convenience of Google which helps me hunt down any song, and YouTube that can even let me watch those songs, there is something that remains in my collection of audio tapes that can not be found anywhere else. 

I lost my walkman, but there's a little radio/tape player that was my first Christmas gift in the US that I continue to hold on to. Listening to my audio cassette collection in that tape player transports me back to a time when Alisha Chinai's Made in India for some reason felt patriotic, when Suneeta Rao's Paree Hoon Main made me feel like I was floating in the air (and filled me with pride just because we shared the same name), when Asha ji's Tanha Tanha made me love her voice all over again!

I realize that it's not the songs or even the tapes,  but it's the memories associated with them that bring me such joy! So after an hour or two of listening, the cleaning bug has left me and I, feeling warm and happy, have left the shelf alone. 

I'm sure Marie Kondo would approve too!