“…Charity is a coat you wear, twice
a year” –what lines! I marvelled and thought all the day….
I was in Class IX in 1990. My
birthday that year had been preceded by an event to remember that my fashion
icon come English singer had released his solo album ‘Listen without Prejudice’
on 9th of September. It was not available in Kolkata.
With the new advent of Jhanker Beats
in the realm of Bollywood music cassettes, the shops selling cassettes had been much focused
on that only, because it took sales to the highest levels ever. Western music
in the city of Howarh was not much a thing to be taken care of. The only cassette
shop beside Parijat Cinema Hall used to keep my requests personally and only through
him and my bosom friend Rana-Da (Sanjib Mitra) I had the immense pleasure to
savour up the Western pop and rock music on a regular basis. At school I had no one whom I would share my kind of music with. The dampened walls of my room at the ground floor
of our ancestral house at Salkia were full of posters and clippings of the contemporary
pop and rock stars. Hindi music never attracted me much until A.R. Rahman came and changed it all. Peopel hardly knwe the the different genres of Pop and Rock and Hard Rock and Sentimetal and RnB and Reggae. For Bengali music I was much
taken only to Ajay Chakraborty (much before he turned in to a Pundit) and Manna Dey. For my parents my developing
taste for music was rather disappointing, as during the study breaks I really
enjoyed watching M-TV and weekly I used to listen to the BBC Top 20 Charts every
Thursday at 5:30 pm IST on radio. For keeping a record of the charts status I
had a series of diaries. After 9th September, 1990 ‘Praying for Time’
of George Michael from his latest release ‘Listen without Prejudice’ had been
topping the charts for consecutive three weeks straight and I was getting more
desperate and exasperated to get it straight. The only hub where I could get it from was Free School Street in Kolkata, the very gold mine of off-beat music sources
ever. I wanted a ‘Peacock’ version of the album in the cassette form. ‘Peacock’
was a brand that was damp proof with high fidelity sound quality. It was
available only on the streets at Free School Street. The brand was of quality
that ‘Symphony’ at Esplanade had never heard of even. Even veteran Sen-da there
could not help me in anyway with my expectations. As visiting Kolkata had been an
occasion those days, I could get it after two months of wait.
1996. My final year of grduation from Maulana Azad College. Six Years had passed in between.
Things had changed a lot. Symphony had satarted keeping the original Virgin Record
cassettes with 'Epic' collaboration. But when George Michael came up with an overhauling change in his album ‘Older’, merging pop-philosophy-rock-n-roll-blues together, we were all overwhelmed. None of his songs from the album was banned worldwide and despite its
terribly slow rhythmic pattern, when everyone in the world was turning to Disk-kind of music, the score 'Jesus to a Child' turned out to be one of the masterpieces ever. It took the world by storm straightaway. On 14th of May, 1996, ‘Older’ was released. I went to Symphony to avail it three days later. Sadly, I came to know, for the first time Virgin Records would not export it to India as from
the US Dreamworks records had taken up that deal of export. Things went long and winding. I had to stick to the BBC top charts and Top MTV video slots for under-quality
occasional listening to the track without any prejudice, before Symphony at
Esplanade provided me that album three weeks later.
I can remember the day in sweating June.
Sen-da from Symphony Esplanade had told me that the cassette would be available on a Thursday there. When I
reached the shop, that moroning, it was just up with its shutters. I had to kill time for the entire
day around the place without food until I could get that at around 7pm in the evening. I knew my
friends who are waiting for me to serve them this piece of music would surely
treat me to the top-of –the-world. I felt I was carrying the cassette home “through a throng of foes”
around (allusive phrsasl courtesy James Joyce).
Next day I carried the cover of the cassette to the
local barbar-salon as I wanted a prototype ‘V’ as him on my fore-head. When everyone laughed, for that rustic hairstyle prevalent in India I had craved for,
I, deeply conceited, laughed within myself, “Forgive them George, because they
will take another decade to understand the way you do things, with that
looming ‘v’ on your fore-head….”
'V'-ing you, George, on your birthday.....
6 comments:
Nostalgia......
Surely...when it comes to writing...
Nice. It seems that a teenager has poured his heart out. Makes me think of How4ah and Kolkata in my younger days.
Ohh yeah.. GM 'v' was a cult indeed. I can still remember that Philips mono tape recorder under your cot producing a hallucinating sound effect. When I listened it for the first time I could not locate it's position. It was amazing. Falling back, those were so trivial things comparing to these days hifi gadgets. Something Whispers in my ear and says...Where is amusement that we lost in entertainment.
@achin: Dont run so very philosophical bro, with missing things...are we not fortunate enough that the things we had grown up with exist in a dufferent form? Just enjoy it all...
It is an absorbing write-up to go through. Thanks for sharing.
I am forwarding this to some of my contacts in Shillong who are fond of Western Music.
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