“Uncle even my dad said, he bought tape recorder with his first salary. What is so special about it?” asked the boy of twenty five years more in wonder than amuse. The boy sees the tape recorder as the most primitive of the gadgets lying in his house used also by people primitive at home. He did not like anything connected with the tape recorder- the spring controlled switches, the wire, the unwieldy leather cover, cassettes, the archaic looking cassette holder and the stool that carried slots for them. The only connection with the tape recorder that was not to his dislike was the grandpa who though was the object of butt and tease for things archaic at home including the tape.

It was unimaginable and hence unacceptable to the boy that it was the most luxuries and prestigious of items that his father proudly displayed in his teens. It was the cost of a cup of tea, (twenty five paisa) that ordinary mortals who cannot afford a tape recorder had to part with to listen to a favourite song in restaurants where a ‘pay and listen’ system of Juke box was a luxury addition. Possessing a tape thus made other students rally round him to listen to songs without payment, a luxury for students then. With no TV and other gadgets it was tape recorder all the way as the most prestigious item of display. But the grandpa of the house who bought the tape had to face active ridicule by the youngsters who swore on non availability of spare parts, mechanics, even tapes in the days to come. But he was steadfast in his desire because he was cut up with the CD for its inability to rewind and move forward as directed by a switch as his favourite tape does.

The house had a Sonata car and Tata Indigo. Right from cell phone holders, CD players, noisy speakers they had gadgets galore inside the cars with a specific taunt to the grandpa that there is no tape. The grandpa at times used to lapse in mourn on the fate of the tape recorder that his son flaunted proudly. With grimed dust, it was lying in the shelf and moved to the loft if the shelf needed space for a better gadget and again got shifted to a steel trunk if the loft is considered overfed. The grandpa was very upset that though the tape was functioning, leaving it uncovered, unattended and unused led to its repair. The satin cloth that was used to minutely cover the tape in it’s hey days was also rotting in some corner.

More than the treatment to the tape recorder, the lesson that people did not learn on values upset the grandpa more. Today his son earns enough to fiddle with his cars and TVs and fridges and wash machines and apply trial and error methods in their purchase. But the poor tape was bought by him for his son as a birthday gift on his entering college, by saving fifty rupees a month for a year and after spending five hundred and fifty on the tape and a princely five on the cover, thirty six rupees was spent in celebration by visiting a restaurant.

The grand children at home have laughed repeatedly referring to this as ‘tape statistics’ and the upset grandpa used to get normal after visiting a luxurious restaurant with them who as icing of their mock would say ‘Papa, we are in a luxurious restaurant and visiting a restaurant itself was luxury to you when you were in college, is isn’t it. Only time will tell whether the children learnt lessons on the value of money by the repeated mention of the tape story by the grandpa. 

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