Tuning into the radiogram Premium

For most people of those good old days, radio was the only source of home music in India. The rich had gramophones.

It was 1965. MBBS was just added to my name and I was receiving 100 rupees as monthly stipend during my internship in Visakhapatnam. She was studying M.Sc. in the same city. We were not yet married. We went window-shopping one day when we were thrilled to see a just introduced two-in-one model. It was a radiogram, a combination of a radio and a gramophone, which plays three types of recorded vinyl gramophone discs (plates). By the standards of those days, it was of a small compact size (size of a medium-sized suitcase), priced at a whopping 700 rupees.

We ventured to go inside and had an impressive demonstration of it. Intoxicated by the music, we looked at each other and walked out as the price was far above our means. Surged by dopamine and serotonin, the happy hormones, infused by the pleasant music, we walked into a nearby jewellery shop, sold the small gold chain she was wearing and bought the HMV Conquest radiogram. We took turns to keep it in each of our hostel rooms. Her problem was to face the questions about the absence of the gold chain when she goes home on the next vacation.

For most people of those good old days, radio was the only source of home music in India. The rich had gramophones. There were no tape-recorders, no TVs, no cellphones and the myriad music devices of the present day.

In those halcyon days of “Ceylon’s Binaca Geetmala”, we, the raucous youth, used to rapturously sway to the Hindi film songs on Wednesdays in our hostel’s radio room, though we did not know a bit of that language.

The songs Achcha To Hum Chalte Hain (Aan Milo Sajna), Bindiya Chamkegi (Do Raaste), Zindagi Ek Safar Hai Suhana (Andaz) and many others from Rajesh Khanna films made a lasting impression.

April 22 was observed as World Record Store Day. In 2016, after a two-and-a-half-decade lull, there was a serious activity to revive manufacture of “33 rpm long-playing records (LPs)” for unknown reasons — perhaps, audiophiles demand fidelity over clarity. That initiative does not seem to have succeeded much.

Long ago, we sang the dirge of all those outdated big-sized gadgets. The youngsters of today would not have seen those disks and gadgets since they are relics of the past. They must be wondering how people lived in those days without the currently available electronic gadgets and other entertainment facilities. By a stroke of serendipity, we still have that prized possession of the 1965 HMV Conquest gadget along with a wooden stand we got made for 30 rupees after getting married half-a-century ago and four years after buying this radiogram.