Playing The Past
The other day I received a picture of an audio cassette and a pencil, with a message ‘Future generations will never know the unique relationship between an audio cassette and a pencil.’ How true! The sentence reminded me of my huge collection of audio cassettes, and took me down the memory lane, to my home (where I spent my childhood), where a cupboardful of cassettes are ‘resting peacefully’. Cassettes and I go back a long way! When I was a toddler, my mom used to play nursery rhymes for me in a cassette player, which was considered to be a luxury during those days. As I grew older, my bond with these reels became stronger. My brother’s collection mostly comprised of English albums and Ghazals, which he used to boast of. George Michael, Michael Jackson, Bryan Adams, Pretty Woman, Enigma, Pankaj Udhas, Jagjit-Chitra, Ghulam Ali and the list is endless. Out of these, many albums were re-recorded – borrowing the cassette from a friend, and recording the songs on a blank audio ca