While you were sleeping...

A friend gifted S a Worldspace subscription... so most of the time at home during the last couple of days has been spent testing its limits. But the real surprise came about late last night, when on switching on a Bangla channel, all we could hear for the next hour or so were old melodies by Manna Dey. No RJ spreading his/her gyan, no baniyan advertisements...only and only music - something I had forgotten to expect of radio. You see, listening to cassettes or CDs is not as much fun, because you know what song will follow. It's only a radio station that plays good music consistently that keeps up the suspense of what is to follow.But what does that have to do with your (or mine, for that matter) sleep?Listening to this station, I was trying to remember the last time I had heard uninterrupted music like this...way back, before the FM revolution. When all that we had was the non-commercial sarkari radio stations - Calcutta A and Calcutta B... with no FM stations till far, far away. Listening to this made me feel how I did not know how much I missed it. And I tried to think of some more things that had vanished silentlySome more things that vanished? The safari suit. Remember that grey/brown/powder blue coloured half-sleeved suit thing that was worn without a shirt inside, had collars similar to but smaller than a suit's? all the uncles used to wear it... with ridiculous pockets not only on the chest but also at near the waist of the short-shirt. Now the only people who wear it are the contractors and tent-wallahs. though there's proof that not only is it alive, it even has trends for 2007 and a calender to boot!!Remember there was this time when one would land up unannounced at some one's place and sit and wait for half an hour? The only thing that surprised me when I first heard about how things were abroad, was the fact that no one ever went to meet anyone without calling... none of us ever noticed when that happened to us. Those were the times of ITI's heavy black telephones with circular dials... with a variety of services like false-rings and cross-connections... that is if your line was up and working, in the first place. Oh, these fancy credit-card size mobiles with speed dials are such a kill-joy!