Sir,

In his article titled ‘A Golden Gift from a Golden Era’ under the weekly column ‘Over a Cup of Evening Tea’ (SOM dated Mar.14), Dr. Javeed Nayeem has taken us back to those halcyon days of musical era reverberating the music of the mellifluous singing of the greats like Pankaj Mullick, Saigal, K.C. Dey, Atmaa etc. I am sure this must have made many a member of older generation to go back in time.

I still enjoy the song by Noor Jahan ‘Barasore’ after Saigal is burning when he sang Deepak Raga ‘Diya Jalav’ song.

Particularly I feel a sense of regret for we had a very nice Gramaphone recorder with lots of records which my father gave away. I was young and was not bright enough to protest for I never realised its importance then.

This happens all too often for I remember the coffee grinder fixed to the wooden plank of our open cupboard in the kitchen and the soapstone vessels used for preparing Saaru etc. In fact, we had Bharjhi, Gurani and small hand-held gun in our house at Krishnamurthypuram.

We were told it was the relic of our being in some security service for which, as related by my father, the title of ‘Bapu’ came as our ancestors dodged the British in protecting some treasure. We had a record of Gohar Jan where at the end she would announce in English ‘I am Gohar Jan’.

Then there was another record by a Gamaki Singer Nagamma who would announce at the end in Kannada ‘I am twelve year old Balaki Nagamma’. She was the disciple of Basavappa Sastri.

At this point of time what I remember of the record was the broken pieces would be rubbed on thick sandal round board and the paste used as a remedy for scorpion bite. If we had only retained it, it would have been a priceless heritage now.

Many times in life we have missed a golden opportunity for in our anxiety to get rid of useless things that clutter our houses we throw away things and regret later.

– H.R. Bapu Satyanarayana, Saraswathipuram, 15.3.2021

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