Obsolete

I have been wanting to write this for the longest. I thought there will be that epic moment to decide that the time is right. The funny part is; in waiting for that epic moment, a lot more instances were adding itself to the article. Being in advertising doesn’t help either. You start thinking of packaging and the end result; even before the baby is born. The vanity doesn’t last for long either; because by then there is something else vying for your attention.

This generation of ours or even a decade before; say from the early 1960’s; we have seen a lot of phases. I would want to believe we are the lucky lot to not only have seen these phases but also be active users of products in these phases. A lot of things and species have become obsolete in these years. The idea is to not make me sound like this cool dude from the dinosaur era; but indeed we have witnessed a lot of in-vogue products becoming obsolete. Some of these have a very emotional connect to our growing up years. I think we were lucky to have that fine balance of technology, as it existed then, and life in general. This is what happens to advertising people; the precursor is longer than the crux itself.

So without wasting any more character space let me start by listing them. I would go in the order of what I had at my disposal and what followed as I kept getting older.

Radio: We had a Philips. My dad and I would struggle with the band just to get to the right point where we got Vividh Bharati or to some vague channels on AM. But nothing can beat the epic moment in 1983; when DD decided to show the news at a crucial juncture. I tuned into the match on radio. In just about 40 minutes the match had turned upside down. I ran to the house which had a TV and was more or less “the place” during matches. Nobody believed when I said WI is 66/5. Eventually when the live telecast started; we were inching towards victory and I had a “I told you so” expression pasted on my face.
2 in 1 /Stereo: Nostalgic when you say 2 in 1. We were a very Philips family; so we had a stereo too of the same brand. It had a decent output. The first cassette we listened to was the Grammys ’84. Still remember all the memorable songs right from “Stuck on you”, “Penny lover” to “Whats love got to do with it”. In about 2 years we replaced a stereo with a slightly more evolved system; which was an Onida. Another five years we bought an Akai; thanks to an offer.
Cassettes: I still have my Pink Floyd collection of cassettes. Most of my English collection was on TDK; probably the best in terms of quality. There was T-series and HMV too when it came to Hindi and Malayalam numbers. I think, things like cassettes made us an engineer at an early age. At times, the damn tape used to get stuck in the system. One had to carefully take it out. Break it; chop the unusable portion and stick the rest together with a thin band of tape on the inside. It used to work!. We didn’t have much of a choice; but to make it work. Same is the case with video cassettes.
Floppy Disks/Drives: I had taken computer science as the subject in junior college. We used to work on Basic 80 machine with an 8inch floppy disk! It was kept safe as if it’s a treasure worth millions. I was among the lucky few to get access; thanks to some coding skills. Then it became 5.5 and then 3.25(the worst of the lot). I used to have a carton of carefully labelled floppies with all my work; multiple copies for obvious reasons.
Telegram: It was symbolic of good news, bad news or emergency. I will focus my energy on the good and the emergency. As an engineering student; your beginning of the month is when the money arrives and in a week the month-end begins. It was a time when one had rolling debts. Either you have spent or your friends have. It worked both ways with friends. So emergency during our time was a telegram which had a word limit. Invariably that word limit was dictated by the money in your pocket. The messaging was simple. “Send Money. Love – Sudhir”. In a week the money would come as money order or DD. The good part is because you were far from home and in the absence of a mobile and just one common phone for the hostel; getting through to us wasn’t easy; so money would come with not much questions asked. That brings me to the good news. Again simple messaging “Passed. Love – Sudhir” or “Passed with ATKT. Love – Sudhir”. You can very well understand what bad news meant in my case.
Walkman /CDman/VCD: Every room in the hostel had to have a Walkman. That in turn was connected to a local made amplifier with speakers connected and hanging from the wall. The engineering mind made the speakers balance on perforated “Matkas” and the end output used to be awesome. The coolness quotient then was defined by the Walkman and the headphones. Then came CDman which did pretty much the same. Somehow I preferred the Walkman due to its form factor.
Typewriter (classical and electronic): Something that built my career. Once done with engineering it was time to kick-start my career. My friends and I would walk all the way to the station in the evening to get our “Curriculum Vitae” made. LOL. Bird watching being the added incentive for the long walk. The decibel level used to be quite high with all the typists typing furiously. Some used to run into pages; either a legal document or something else. The typist was the person in demand. Some used to be rude to people like us and some quite considerate. As time progressed we had our favourite typist. I owe it to them for the original and carbon copies; which I used to post to all possible job openings. Then we progressed to electronic typewriters. The quality used to be awesome and it looked classy with red titles and the works.
Others on the way to becoming obsolete: CDs, Letters, Landlines, Fax, Modems, Dotmatrix printers