It was 1965. MBBS was just added to my name and I was receiving 100 rupees as monthly stipend during my internship in Visakhapatnam. She was studying M.Sc. in the same city. We were not yet married. We went window-shopping one day when we were thrilled to see a just introduced two-in-one model. It was a radiogram, a combination of a radio and a gramophone, which plays three types of recorded vinyl gramophone discs (plates). By the standards of those days, it was of a small compact size (size of a medium-sized suitcase), priced at a whopping 700 rupees.
We ventured to go inside and had an impressive demonstration of it. Intoxicated by the music, we looked at each other and walked out as the price was far above our means. Surged by dopamine and serotonin, the happy hormones, infused by the pleasant music, we walked into a nearby jewellery shop, sold the small gold chain she was wearing and bought the HMV Conquest radiogram. We took turns to keep it in each of our hostel rooms. Her problem was to face the questions about the absence of the gold chain when she goes home on the next vacation.
For most people of those good old days, radio was the only source of home music in India. The rich had gramophones. There were no tape-recorders, no TVs, no cellphones and the myriad music devices of the present day.
