One of the biggest amusing things about technology is that it can act as your good friend as well as a ruthless enemy. Recently I came across a website looking for someone deserving to buy their used yet impressive collection of music cassettes.
Of course, I didn't go for the offer, although this did set a thought process in my mind. Who would, in this digital era, understand their worth and preserve them?
I hurried to my store cupboard and ran a quick glance through the shelf of unused dust-coated cassettes. There must have been a fifty of them, hiding in the cupboard. As I ran my fingers through their spines, memories gushed up.
"Oh, this one I got one day lying in my room!"
"That's the evergreen song my grandfather sings!"
"Can that be my classic favourite?"
In a matter of minutes, each of those cassettes got accounted for, with regard with their personal history associated with me, or better still, my childhood.
Today you can build an impressive collection of music by spending just one night on the computer. Not only that: you can even carry around those hundreds of songs in a device smaller than your thumb.
Those days, it would take you years to build a collection of music of your choice. There were so many procedures involved. And so you built your collection, brick by brick. Simultaneously, you also invested in ‘head cleaners' and in cassette holders, and paid visits to shops that recorded songs of your choice on blank cassettes for two rupees a song. Not to forget those distressing moments when the tape had to be rewound.
Music, in short, was sweat and blood: you had to earn it and work hard to preserve it. But technology intervened one fine morning. Today, even an 8GB pen drive or iPod can hold more music than you would ever want to listen to in your lifetime. But what do you do with the collection of cassettes you've painstakingly built over the years? Give them away? Doesn't that amount to giving away a chunk of your childhood or youth?
Of course, I didn't go for the offer, although this did set a thought process in my mind. Who would, in this digital era, understand their worth and preserve them?
I hurried to my store cupboard and ran a quick glance through the shelf of unused dust-coated cassettes. There must have been a fifty of them, hiding in the cupboard. As I ran my fingers through their spines, memories gushed up.
"Oh, this one I got one day lying in my room!"
"That's the evergreen song my grandfather sings!"
"Can that be my classic favourite?"
In a matter of minutes, each of those cassettes got accounted for, with regard with their personal history associated with me, or better still, my childhood.
Today you can build an impressive collection of music by spending just one night on the computer. Not only that: you can even carry around those hundreds of songs in a device smaller than your thumb.
Those days, it would take you years to build a collection of music of your choice. There were so many procedures involved. And so you built your collection, brick by brick. Simultaneously, you also invested in ‘head cleaners' and in cassette holders, and paid visits to shops that recorded songs of your choice on blank cassettes for two rupees a song. Not to forget those distressing moments when the tape had to be rewound.
Music, in short, was sweat and blood: you had to earn it and work hard to preserve it. But technology intervened one fine morning. Today, even an 8GB pen drive or iPod can hold more music than you would ever want to listen to in your lifetime. But what do you do with the collection of cassettes you've painstakingly built over the years? Give them away? Doesn't that amount to giving away a chunk of your childhood or youth?
Sometimes, when we get things for free we do not realize the value of it. Back then, after buying cassettes I used to listen to songs like crazy... Same songs but still listen to them for hundred times. These days, I listen to even good song a very few times! How I miss those days!
ReplyDeleteYou're right, ES. In the whole piracy process, the entire essence of that craze which you are talking about is lost.
ReplyDeleteyup ! true ! but things do keep changing ;)
ReplyDeleteChange is inevitable but we do sometimes miss those old things.
ReplyDelete