Songs have always played a major part in mainstream Hindi cinema, or Bollywood, as it is popularly known. As my love affair with Hindi films started right from the time I can remember, it is obvious that I was fascinated with Hindi film songs too from the same period.
Those who were born after the 1995 would find it difficult to believe that, apart from FM radio, our source of songs were audio cassettes. It's like a flat box which can be played on both sides - A and B. On an average, there were around five to seven songs on each side.
The decision on whether to buy a cassette would depend on the song trailers of a particular film played on TV or the new songs played on the radio. Then we would excitedly wait for the album of that film to release. Many a times, the decision of buying a cassette would depend purely on the number of big stars in a film.
It would be an exciting moment to visit the music shop buy a cassette. During my early years, a cassette would cost somewhere between Rs 25 to 30. The price kept gradually increasing until it reached around Rs 55 or 60 till the early to mid-2000s.
Unlike today, we used to patiently listen to the entire cassette of a film album, on both sides. But more than patience it was because of the the high quality of Hindi film music that we would never mind playing the whole album in one go.
This is absolutely impossible in today's times where you hardly find any album with even three impressive songs. This is the low at which the current Hindi film music scenario has reached. And those unending and unimpressive remixes have worsen the scenario many times further.
Going back to the old days, we had one or two favorite songs in every album which we would play repeatedly. No, unlike today, we didn't have a simple way of just clicking on a song to play it again. We had to rewind the cassette and stop exactly at the point where the song in question would start. I and many others too I suppose had developed the skill to stop at the exact moment using our judgement.
There would also be films where only three or four songs would turn out to be impressive. Hence, there was also an option of getting few songs from two films in one cassette.
Another interesting feature about audio cassettes was that we also had the option of having a medley of songs from various films. The audio cassette shops would do the task for us after we give a list of songs to them which they would copy on a blank cassette.
Later on, we developed the skill on our own. So, suppose my friend has a cassette from which I like only one song, I would get it copied in a blank cassette through the two-in-one tape recorder.
This would sound funny in today's times but back then I was quite passionate even for the dialogue cassettes. I have the dialogue cassettes of Mohabbatein (2000) and Gadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001). Needless to day, I had mugged up all the dialogues from these cassettes. Much during my childhood we had a four-cassette set of Sholay (1975) which got lost over the years.
As you can guess from the picture, we are very possessive about our collection of audio cassettes. This shelf is more than 20 years old. It has cassettes from as early as Prem Rog which released way back in 1982 to The Killer [starring Irrfan Khan and Emraan Hashmi] which released in 2006.
Yes, we used the cassette player till 2006 or little after that even though music CDs had become the in thing much before that year. Actually the CDs were expensive at around Rs 100 to 200 and we didn't want to spend it on a not-so-great album. I had bought CDs of only superhit albums like Don (2006).
Obviously I get 'Those were the days' kind of feeling whenever I glance at the shelf. But along with feeling nostalgic for the simpler times, this is also because of the deteriorating quality of Hindi film music in today's times.
But nevertheless, I am glad we have maintained the shelf through the decades. This corner in my home assures me that life is still simpler like it was in the 1990s.
By: Keyur Seta
