School Days Memories: Part 2: The Radio and Music

 




20 03 24

We are from the blessed people, who have seen music progressing from a simple radio, to record players, to audio cassettes, to the current forms.

My first favourite, in the early seventies, used to be (like for many others), Binaca Geet Mala (Later Cibaca), with Amin Sayani. Wednesday would be a day eagerly awaited, time 8 PM, when we would hear the all too familiar voice saying ‘Namaskar, Behnon aur Bhaiyon’, on Radio Ceylon. We had a Philips radio, which had Short Wave bands(Not sure @ FM in those years), and, Binaca used to come on one of those bands. Luckily I found a pic of the exact same model via google, and it was this one, indeed.. it says it’s model LX4. (Now, an antique piece worth quite a bit, I am sure ).

Sometimes the reception would not be too good, and the ears had to be kept right on the ‘screen’, in order to hear something. And, woe betide if the electricity went off during that hour.. everyone in the house would know how irritated I was. Ahahaha. At the end of the year, the last two episodes would be the Top 25, and, probably the most awaited of the year.. I used to often note down each and every ‘winning song’ (though for what purpose, I can’t remember, as we had not progressed to audio cassette recorders still)… and, next day, some similarly interested school friends and me would discuss which songs and won and which ones deserved to have been nearer the top spot.

There were also some foreign radio stations which would come in, on the same radio, right from BBC, to VOA(Voice Of America), to Radio Deutchewelle and so on – post on this comes up shortly, since this had become a prime hobby for some years, during the eighties, and, what a hobby it was… amazing.. wait till the next post. 😊


We also had an EP record player, which Dad had brought in from Russia, and there was an album of EP records, mostly Hindi. In those days, the sound from it could really be termed ‘melodious’. But I don’t have too many memories of this one… the main companion was the Philips radio.

Next part coming up soon.

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