My eyes light up as I espy the instantly recognisable album cover in a stack of old vinyl records on display on a pavement along Lenin Sarani near Esplanade바카라the oldest part of British Calcutta where centuries-old neo-classical and neo-gothic mansions cling on still to a shabby-genteel colonial grandeur. 바카라It바카라s the Dark Side of the Moon!바카라 I whisper to myself as I ogle covetously at the single beam of light diffusing into coloured rays against a black background. Finally, the Pink Floyd album I longed to own.
This was in 2005. Just about a year ago, I had inherited an old record player from an aged relative. I got it repaired and used it to play the batch of records I inhÂerited with it바카라Bollywood albums and LPs by Bengali legends like Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Shyamal Mitra and Sandhya Mukhopadhyay. Some vinyls were albums of Rabindrasangeet.
Much like Darjeeling tea, the sound of vinylÂ바카라a warm, crackling wave that envelops you in light warmth바카라is a matter of acquired taste. In depth and timbre, it outperforms the digital accuracy바카라a cold, metÂallic gleam skimming the surface of souÂnds바카라of CDs. Records have an in-buÂilt intimacy to them; it바카라s like listening to live music. Vinyl production in India stopped in the early 1990s; imports stopped soon after. But the sellers on Lenin Sarani and Free School Street kept the supply chain alive by sourcing used records, and keeping them clean and scratch-free. Of course, vinyl has immense staying power too바카라encased in its cover, covered by the clingy, thin plastic, it shrugs off the decades. Every one of them that I own were made before my birth. It fell victim to our headlong rush to embrace new technology, before it recÂlaimed us again with its aural바카라and aesthetic바카라superiority.
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On that blessed 2005 day, I casually asked the seller the price of the Floyd: 바카라How much?바카라 Rs 500, he replied. I faked disinterest, and looked around. As the sun shone on my shoulders, I chanced upon John Denver바카라s Greatest Hits. I drove a hard bargain, and returned home with both for Rs 400. I knew I had to come back. Queen바카라s 1980 album The Game was added to the haul soon.
There were more pavement sellers of disked gold바카라I remember four on Lenin Sarani and three on Free School Street. Buyers, mostly middle-aged and the eldÂerly, were a motley crowd. One came from 100 kms away to collect records for his ailing mother. Another one bought LPs just to keep his turntable in working order, for it represented a time he wanÂted to preserve for the next generation.
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When Outlook photographer Sandipan Chatterjee spotted an LP of the album from the Bengali film SanyÂasi Raja on Free School Street recÂently, the cover took him 50 years back, when he was a toddÂler바카라his father바카라s new, British-made Garrard 3000 turntable took centrestage in their joint family on holidays. Sanyasi Raja was often played. His mother would play it to lull him to sleep. It transported him to his childhood. 바카라Every record has persoÂnal memories attached,바카라 says SandiÂpan.
It바카라s the thing about vinyls바카라they are pressed repositories of a disappeared way of living, and so a favoured fount of nostalgia. Many of us drink from it once removed, lured by the aura of mature cool, immortal cover artwork, exquisite sleeve notes바카라propelled anew by its resurgence in the West. Â
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A second-hand record store tells you about the music a town once heard. By that reckoning, Calcutta from the 바카라50s to the 바카라80s heard Bengali and Hindi film music, individual filmy albums of playback singers, and a lot of Western and Hindustani classical music, operas and Western pop and rock in all their bewildering hues. Pop mainstays like ABBA, Boney M, Bee Gees, Neil Diamond, going as far back as Jim Reeves, Connie Francis and Dean Martin are found in abundance, costing between Rs 300-Rs 700. Albums with immortal art that sticks out like the pyramids바카라Cream바카라s Disraeli Gears and Yardbirds바카라s Little Games, say, or Jefferson Airplane바카라s After Bathing at Baxter바카라s and the Beatles바카라s Sgt Pepper바카라s, are rarer still. Â
바카라Pop, country songs and western classical are available in plenty in Calcutta. Rock, jazz and Blues are rare,바카라 says SheÂikh Danish, who runs Record Prince on Free School Street, metres before it meaÂnders left towards New Market. Then there are those deemed 바카라rare바카라 enough to fetch Rs 1,500-Rs 4,000바카라from Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones and Dire Straits to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Available aplenty also are international pop hits (often 바카라covers바카라 of the year바카라s hits), Latin music and orchÂeÂstral music, often with arrestingly sensuous models splayed on their covers.
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Bengali and Hindi records are cheaper, unless, say, it바카라s a film with R.D. Burman바카라s music or Jagjit Singh바카라s Arth. 바카라You don바카라t get The Burning Train for cheap. PeoÂple love hearing it on a record player,바카라 says Danish. Their relatively high prices are justified, says Tarakeshwara Rao, owner of another Free School Street shop. 바카라Keeping them in good condition requÂires care spanning years. Buyers are few. We are preserving something they don바카라t make anymore. The value is sentimental.바카라 In short, a nursery for nostalgia.
Just as we speak, a couple stops by. 바카라Look, Riju, a gramophone! You would not get to see it again!바카라 says the man to his son, aged five or six. The boy, uninterested, drags his father away. It바카라s a safe wager that the 1974 Joan Baez album that I bought last week for Rs 500 will continue to sing of diamonds and rust even when Riju grows to be my age. Maybe by then he바카라ll see the point of nurturing these past relics바카라perhaps only for the sake of good music, or as homage to vanished generations who trod the same streets, under the same skies.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Of Diamonds And Rust")
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By Snigdhendu Bhattacharya in Calcutta
