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The things people keep
PRINCE FREDERICK
Name: Vaidhyanathan Chandrasekhar
Collection: Audio library
Collecting audio material isn’t unusual. So, when Chandrasekhar tells me about his, I have a reason to dismiss him as unsuitable for this column. But I make a visit without expecting to get a story.
Four shelves in his drawing room show me how wrong I have been. Despite his effort to fill every inch of a table with skyscrapers of audio material (for a photo), the shelves lose only a fraction of what they held. When told there is more in the attic, I am prompted to ask, “How many do you have altogether?” He gives me the break-up: 4,508 cassettes, 1,336 audio CDs, 962 EPs, 822 LPs and 53 MP3s. It took this 59-year-old, 28 years to amass this collection. After learning of his father’s effort to copy music from cassettes on to CDs, Chandrasekhar’s son did a small calculation, “Dad, at the rate of a cassette a day, it will take you over 11 years to complete this task.”
Chandrasekhar talks at length about the Hindi film music from the times of Naushad and O.P. Nayyar , but his collection points to a more eclectic taste. His wife Chandrakala says, “He can listen to any genre of music.” Barring Hindi and Tamil film songs, his collection covers religious discourses and special recordings of legendary musicians. Chandrasekhar also has a collection of articles and books on music. There are three at hand – Method in Madness, a book by Derek Bose on Kishore Kumar, Yesterday’s Melodies, Today’s Memories by Manek Premchand and Hindi Film Song: Music Beyond Boundaries by Ashok Da. Ranade.
His books provide topics for discussion every weekend, when a group of friends flocks to his house to listen to his audios. “Making friends is easier when you have such a collection,” he says. But it has been a costly way to make friends. As he buys only original audio material, you can imagine how much he has spent. He used to hide the records from his wife, but slowly gained her support.
A birthday gift she bought him has these words, “Life is music. Music is life. Rest is all wife.” He has received from his son Arun a single piece of wood on which is carved the word ‘Raga’, the name of Chandrasekhar’s house.
(A fortnightly column on people who collect unusual objects)
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