By Syed Shoib Moin / Kolkata
Today, we live in a world of highly portable, highly functional electronic media devices of incredible capacity. The songs contained on boxes of 45 RPM records of yesteryear can now be downloaded from the Internet and carried everywhere on MP3 and iPod players. In our youth days we were mesmerised by our own favourite Tape Recorder ….
We got our first tape recorder National/Panasonic (Japan), which my father bought from Nepal during his maden visit to the Himalyan kingdom. Cassette and Blank cassettes DDK or something.
We mostly had Ghazals of Jagjit and Ghulam Ali. My Mom had her collection of Hit songs of Lata. Then we had different collections Sad songs, Romantic songs, Joney Liver and Moin Akhtar Jokes. First Film collection was Love story / Silsila on opposite sides of the same cassette. An English rhyme cassatte was also bought for me.
I mostly enjoyed recording my voice in between the songs but just pressing the red ReCord button. Was thrashed left and right for doing so and mingling with the flow of the songs/ ghazals. Abbu also loved recording his renditions of Faiz / Makhdoom/or some of his own rendition.
Jagjit Singh remained the flavour for all and directly or indirectly left a deep mark on me. By the time was in class 10. Late 80’s Doordarshan had serials like Kahkashan on different Urdu writers followed my Magnum opas Mirza Ghalib and the collection of the ghazals sung but Jagjit and Chitra was bought. It was a twin pack. Thus Ghalib captured our brain and most of his shair I learnt by heart.
The exchage of casettes among cousins and friends was common.And the pain of the reels getting stuck in the Head of the recorder and twisting the reels into a zigzag. At times had yo break the reals and sticking them back with dendrite. Bought tape recorder head cleaning lotions. Drying and repacking the reals in was cumbersome but had to do.
Nazia Hassan and Kishore kumar were the new favourites. Followed by the popular films song of the days.
One anecdote can’t forget – My Ammi (Being a very brave and confident women of her times) even after 20- 25 years of marriage used to cry full throat when she left hai maika (Abgila Gaya) after a brief stay with her mother. It used to be a sort of customery rukhsati. Once my Mama recorded the full throated rukhsati in the late 80’s. and the cassette was shared later. This brought end to this ritual………..