I haven’t much idea whether I laughed or cried when I exited my mother’s womb – it must been the latter, as everybody says. I just hope it was a musical cry. In fact, I am quite sure.

There is no inkling whatsoever when I started swaying to music. In my father’s lap, at the perambulator, while learning to walk, with the first babble ……… it could be anything. Or maybe not! It could well be inherited.

I belong to a musically inclined family. Though none in our family have put the larynx to much effort, all of us have strained our ears to catch the slightest melody.

Our first tryst with music was the big radio in the bedroom (well, the bedroom too was huge). Philips – our introduction to technology! It was as big as today’s idiot boxes, with two king sized knobs – one for channel and the other for volume. There were two bold press-buttons, for alternating between SW and MW. SW was shortwave, which permitted listening to castaway voices, while MW was medium wave and gave a feeling of something much closer home. There were no FMs, but then there were also no stupid ads.

We used to wake up with the radio. In an era when clocks and watches rarely kept up with the time, the radio was the most trusted ally to give an accurate account of the minute and hour hands. When the announcer said it was seven o’ clock, there was no reason to believe otherwise. Especially when instances sprung forth of people asking each other where the lady with the nice voice was hiding, such precision in a laid back epoch was worth appreciating.

Even in those times there was no dearth of radio stations. But there was a heavily biased focus on items other than entertainment. News was one big issue which hogged the real-time – of all shapes and sizes, some big, some small, some fast, some slow. And when they went slow, the snails ran. Dheemi gati key samaachar – only one who has heard it can extol its virtues.

MW which provided the best acoustics was monopolised by the government channels. Typically bureaucratic, the sounds that emanated were of the pure red tape variety where everything started with the Prime Minister and ended with him. (This was later adopted by Doordarshan). The only exception was Vividh Bharti – and what an excellent exception that was (in fact, still is).

However there were other exceptions too, even in the governmental All India Radio (AIR) setup. The Urdu channel for example, which aired the choicest Hindi songs. Ceylon radio presented some excellent picks, Nepal radio was another.

The mix was a heady one. Nobody who should have got his or her due was denied one. Be it the great Pankaj Mullick, or lesser known C.H. Atma, we got to hear them all. Mohd. Rafi, Mukesh, Lata, Asha, Suraiya, Kishore, Manna De, Yesudas, Vani Jayram, Shamshad Begum…… the list is quite endless. Then among the musicians there was a plethora of great artists – Naushad, Khayyam, Roshan, Shanker-Jaikishen, S.D. Burman, to name a few.

They gave us haunting music and they worked industriously to attain the premier quality that they managed with unfailing regularity, song after song. Even without the help of modern day technologies, they dished out scintillating fare. A song took as much as a month to be perfected and presented. What jewels they were!

My weekdays passed off in a jiffy – morning to evening in school, then a couple of games of cricket, then back to homework and studies. But Sunday was special as I indulged in melodious songs from morning to evening without break. Most of the time it was Vividh Bharti which dedicated the maximum portion of its programmes to the vintage stuff. But whenever it stopped for something else, or for sometime, my deft fingers was at it – playing with the radio knob and guiding the indicator to desired places. The music was non-stop, masti was of a different kind altogether that brought out the melody from deep inside me. As it did with everybody else!

The movies and the scenes to which the songs were attached were unnecessary – few of them could match the quality of the music. Anyway the dance around the trees routine never could live up to it. The moviemakers, barring a few, never brought out the creativity that their musician partners did. My father never did believe in movies. He always felt that they were not good enough for all the pain and money. So we never got to see the movies when they were out – an outstanding example was Sholay which I got to see some twenty years after it became a super duper hit, and that too on television.

Some radio channels sought to bring in some chutzpah with the weekly tops. Ceylon was one shining example, and I remember the fact that the entire locality would cluster around the radio sets at the predestined day and hour. Those who didn’t have a radio (there were some) huddled around their neighbour’s, but huddle they all did.

To me, the ranking was humbug, to gain some cheap TRPs (such a nomenclature didn’t exist then, however). No soul can compare Mukesh with Rafi with Kishore. If someone does, he is fooling himself. And neither can anyone compare Lata with Asha with Geeta Dutt. Nor can their respective songs be classified as such. Such exercises will always remain exercises in futility.

The best thing about music is that it allows simultaneous jobs. Multitasking, that is. Studying, cooking, reading books …… My life was cast along with the music, as I tackled one hurdle after another. Music never did forsake me. No radio station had the heart to deny me a single moment of musical solitude; there was always another waiting to shower me with heaven when one stopped.

Somewhere along the way the two-in-one made a grand entry. There was a cassette player now too. Music just got better. More easy!

With time, I underwent a metamorphosis to imbibe in the other world too. After all, any music is great, in whatever form or language. I soaked in the effervescent sparks of Cliff Richards, or the baritone of Jim Reeves. Phil Collins with his brand of hip-hop music didn’t disappoint me either.

I took in the classicals with impunity of a toddler. Be it the contemporaries of Bhimsen Joshi, the ghazals of Mehndi Hassan and Jagjit Singh, or the thumris of Begum Akhtar, I lapped them all. Parveen Sultana provided a rare vocal cord that I could find nowhere else.

With time, the music changed. The golden era disappeared. Lifestyle changed. The likes of Shabbir Kumar and Nitin Mukesh entered the scene and the magic was gone. Singers were judged by the aspect of repetitiveness – who could sing like Rafi, like Mukesh, like Kishore…… The originality was replaced with crass. Lata and Asha were past their prime, their voices had broken due to incessant singing and there was no one to replace them. Hindi music acquired a dull bad beat. For a few years, the realm was totally lost.

That was music in my life. Till it took a siesta! Along the way, television came in. Dishing out the unworthy, the crap. Excellence fizzled out, mediocrity tantalised me with its daftness. The harmony was out. As well as the heart beat. For a long twenty three years!

Only recently have I broken free. Having forsaken the titillating fares of television to indulge again! The oldies are back with a vengeance. The cassette has returned. So too has Vividh Bharti, though sufficiently mellowed. I realise I had been a fool all along.

The music is in me. So too the fun of life! So too the happiness! So too GOD! With a nice little book for company!

I am all ears, again.