What is the best purchase you have ever made?
When the phones were not that ‘smart’, they were just basic mobile phones. They could not do a lot, but nonetheless like any innovation, they were a remarkable development of their time. It might be a bit difficult to imagine today, but there used to be a time when there would be maybe one mobile phone in a household, the landlines were still holding their front quite well.
So, my father brought home a new mobile phone from one of his official trips abroad. It had what I thought back then was an interesting feature. It could record sound, for a very limited duration, and I thought I could record some of a few songs that I liked and they could be played anywhere. So, I did it, I had a small cassette player, I inserted the cassettes of my favourite songs, played it with the phone placed near the cassette player speaker, recording, it took some hard work and time. But the outcome was honestly terrible, the recording wasn’t that good, neither was the mobile phone speaker. So you know my excitement when actually music became an important part of the later featured phones.
I have loved my gadgets of music, initially a radio, then a cassette player, then mp3 players and of course the more advanced mobile phone. There was a Hi-Fi system in home as well, it’s there somewhere a forgotten relic.
When I started my job, one of the first things I bought was a portable speaker. I think portable speakers are one of the greatest technologies, they are small and can be carried literally anywhere. After a while they don’t feel heavy on the mind and ears like the headphones or earbuds. Portable speakers have aged well; across the years they have gotten so much better. I have had a few of them, one is here right now with me playing. But my first one, that was my best purchase.
The first portable speaker I had got has played through so many treasured moments of my life. Most of these moments were with friends, sometimes at the office, through the ups and downs as I was learning the way life works. But it was everywhere and there was a time of my life when I thought, just like the cinemas, our real lives deserve music for all its happy moments. The speaker’s battery gave up, and like the things of the past I have been too emotional to discard, it is lying somewhere.
Now that I have come across its memories. I am going to finish writing this and I will go and give it a glance.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 