Everybody needs one...

Saregama Carvaan is a perfect gift for those who miss listening to songs at the simple turn

of a knob My birthday gift came early this year. A big box that I unwrapped warily (I know very well that good things come in small packages. The last time I unpacked one of the same size it had a lemonade set in plastic). Husband Raju has been sternly instructed not to buy me gifts without cross-checking with me. But he did it nevertheless, and I haven’t stopped smiling since. Ta daa... Meet Saregama Carvaan. In bright marbled blue, it looks like a transistor, and I am in love even before I know what it is all about. That love deepens as I switch it on and Ameen Sayani’s voice fills my living room. I can’t believe my ears as Binaca Geetmala comes on. An entire channel in the Carvaan is dedicated to the programme that everyone my age and older are fans of. Songs that played on Wednesday nights from 9 pm to 10 pm right through the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s are back with nuggets of anecdotes added by Sayani. There are gems from the celebrity interviews from Sayani’s archives. In 1975, when SD Burman passed away, Ameen Sayani tried hard to get a tribute from Mohammed Rafi. But Rafi was out of station and it did not happen right away. Sayani’s chief copy writer, Riyaz, managed to get the singer to record a tribute. Sayani plays that tribute. Then there is RD Burman speaking of how he and Rajesh Khanna fought, then hugged and made up. Kishore Kumar on his last conversation with SD Burman… He went on to sing Burman’s last song, ‘Badi sooni sooni hai zindagi’, from Mili. Zarina Wahab speaks about her co-star Amol Palekar during Chitchor’s radio publicity… I am transported to old movie halls in Calcutta like Priya, Maneka, Naveena, Bhawani, Basusree… (Why do they all have female names?), Antakshari sessions with friends, standing forever in lines to buy movie tickets, film gossip of those days, the heartthrobs. It is astounding how many songs Raju and I can sing along with, and how many movies we remember. I can even remember the clothes the hero and heroine wore in the song. I relive the time I was beside myself with excitement when my friend and I managed to buy tickets for Bobby and Sholay. I don’t know about you, but my pet peeve is how listening to music has become such a pain. I hate using earphones or head phones, and music through my laptop feels like too much like work. On Saregama, I just turn a knob and I hear songs just like God intended me to. And there is enough music there to keep me happy for a long time. Besides Geetmala, Carvaan has other channels. On Moods for example, you can pick songs from nine moods such as happy (‘Haal kaisa hai janaab ka’), Sad (‘Oh Sajna, barkha bahaar aayee’), Romantic (‘Dum bhar jo udhar munh phere oh chanda’), Sufi, Classical, and so on. I didn’t agree with their classification of some of the songs, but that is a minor point. Or on the Artistes channel, 25 singers, music directors and composers across decades serenade you. In the Artiste Mix option, tracks across artistes are played in random order. An FM mode allows you to hear FM channels. (A station selector manually tunes to a radio station. Only FM channels play in this mode). And best of all, it is portable. A fellow music buff draws my attention to the fact that we can’t make our own playlists. But that is exactly why I love the Carvaan. I enjoy the suspense of not knowing what the next song is going to be, what happy memory it will trigger, what emotions it will give rise to. For me, that is a huge plus. I like to live dangerously. ‘When I was young I would listen to the radio’, sang The Carpenters, and like them, the favourite songs are back in my life like a longlost friend. Saregama costs ₹5,990. But I don’t think you can really put a price on nostalgia. (Saregama Carvaan comes in Grey, Blue and White. It is available on Amazon or directly through