One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is that of a purple boombox. It was a multi-cassette player that my father brought from Kuwait on one of his first trips back home. The color struck a stark contrast with anything else in the house, not just appliances, even the women’s nail polishes were not that jazzy.

It was a Sanyo, so Japanese brand, highly reputed and respected in India for electronics. Sony, National, Toshiba, and Sanyo were in that order for consumer electronics and light appliances. So, the Sanyo boombox, was a status symbol. Multi cassette player was considered even better, a luxury good. It had one cassette that was inserted from the top and the other from the bottom. You would flip the box to swap out cassettes. It had 6 speakers so was just as audible top-down as it was bottoms-up.

The quality of the sound was delightful. The first song we heard from it, I still remember! “Ichakadana bichakadana'“ from Shree 420 to the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh. Then came Sindhu Bhairavi, and Manna Dey. This box went on to provide countless hours of entertainment. This was some of the basis for my loving classical and filmy music. When there were not enough cassettes to play, we had neighbors. The only thing they would want is the previlege of inserting their casettes into the player. Small price for the return, so this was easy. Suddenly we had an analog version of Netflix for audio. One guy even brought in a Michael Jackson Bad or Thriller casette!

We would use the player for Antakshari games that involved songs, for guess the tune games, musical chairs (only there were no chairs!) or other use cases. The player got atleast 2-3 hours of solid use each day. After a few weeks, the player needed a bit of oiling due to the heat from the friction and over use ;) I still bet this was just a make believe to prevent us from using it so much!

Small things gave us kids so much joy, these days kids are so much harder to please! This purple boombox was an occasion for the family to huddle around a small box and hum to tunes. It led to fights on whose songs to play first, the order mattered.

In today’s world, a phone has everything built into it. It is all an app. But back in those days, the appliance was king. The more you had, the latest model, the brand names, logos, and even stickers embellished on them. One of the TV makers in India, Onida, even said, “Neighbors Envy, Owners’ Pride” - that caption was so true for the innocent era that was the 1980s in India.

I write a lot about people and places, but this thing carries a special memory.

One of the most vivid memories I have from my childhood is that of a purple boombox. It was a multi-cassette player that my father brought from Kuwait on one of his first trips back home. The color struck a stark contrast with anything else in the house, not just appliances, even the women’s nail polishes were not that jazzy.

It was a Sanyo, so Japanese brand, highly reputed and respected in India for electronics. Sony, National, Toshiba, and Sanyo were in that order for consumer electronics and light appliances. So, the Sanyo boombox, was a status symbol. Multi cassette player was considered even better, a luxury good. It had one cassette that was inserted from the top and the other from the bottom. You would flip the box to swap out cassettes. It had 6 speakers so was just as audible top-down as it was bottoms-up.

The quality of the sound was delightful. The first song we heard from it, I still remember! “Ichakadana bichakadana'“ from Shree 420 to the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh. Then came Sindhu Bhairavi, and Manna Dey. This box went on to provide countless hours of entertainment. This was some of the basis for my loving classical and filmy music. When there were not enough cassettes to play, we had neighbors. The only thing they would want is the previlege of inserting their casettes into the player. Small price for the return, so this was easy. Suddenly we had an analog version of Netflix for audio. One guy even brought in a Michael Jackson Bad or Thriller casette!

We would use the player for Antakshari games that involved songs, for guess the tune games, musical chairs (only there were no chairs!) or other use cases. The player got atleast 2-3 hours of solid use each day. After a few weeks, the player needed a bit of oiling due to the heat from the friction and over use ;) I still bet this was just a make believe to prevent us from using it so much!

Small things gave us kids so much joy, these days kids are so much harder to please! This purple boombox was an occasion for the family to huddle around a small box and hum to tunes. It led to fights on whose songs to play first, the order mattered.

In today’s world, a phone has everything built into it. It is all an app. But back in those days, the appliance was king. The more you had, the latest model, the brand names, logos, and even stickers embellished on them. One of the TV makers in India, Onida, even said, “Neighbors Envy, Owners’ Pride” - that caption was so true for the innocent era that was the 1980s in India.

I write a lot about people and places, but this thing carries a special memory.