The Soundtrack of my Childhood
I’ve always been amazed by how scents and music can instantly take you back to a particular time in your life. I often catch myself humming a line from a song while driving or cooking, and suddenly I’m transported back to my childhood. Those memories are etched in my mind like the rings of a tree trunk - growing richer with each new layer of experience, yet sturdily remaining there, quietly preserving the moments that shaped me.
Growing up with my two sisters in Bareilly and Delhi, I still remember my first introduction to music when I was four or five years old. My parents, both avid fans of the great Bollywood singers of the era (this was the 1970s), brought home a cassette player (I remember calling it a tape recorder all my childhood). I can still picture it vividly. One of the very first songs I remember hearing was “Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh” from Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayi, which my mother would play over and over again.
The cassette player seemed like an amazing things in our lives. We were scared to operate it and the tape inside the cassette seemed like the most delicate and precious thing ever — quick to get entangle at the smallest glitch.
We listened to music all the time. My sisters and I didn’t really understand the lyrics back then, but we loved the tunes, the melodies, and the ambience they created. The music would be played in our little verandah in our Bareilly house in the evenings or in our cosy living room of our apartment in Delhi.
Get Shivani’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Looking back now, I’m amazed by the richness of Bollywood music from that era. Songs sung by legends such as Suraiya, Geeta Dutt, Shamshad Begum, Lata Mangeshkar, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Mukesh, and so many others, became part of the soundtrack of our childhood.
I also remember being fascinated by the gramophone at my grandfather’s house in our tiny village of Boath, in Adilabad. Every summer, my sisters and I, along with all our lovely cousins, would spend our holidays at my grandparents’ home. To us, it felt less like a house and more like a palace — full of wonder, freedom, and endless adventures.
One of my fondest memories is waking up each morning to music drifting through the house from my grandfather’s gramophone. He seemed to have a favorite collection of just three or four records that he played over and over again. One of them was “Dekho O Deewano, Tum Yeh Kaam Na Karo.” Even now, I can’t help but smile when I think about it. Perhaps it was his gentle way of telling all of us sleepy grandchildren to wake up and be a little more diligent with our lives!
The years passed, and we moved from one city to another, but the music traveled with us. Our collection of cassettes came along too, and almost every evening we would listen to the carefully curated mix of songs my father had recorded. As we grew older, we learnt to appreciate the lyrics too. While we speak Hindi fluently, we often found ourselves researching meanings of Urdu lyrics to understand the meaning behind Bollywood songs with Urdu words.
More than five decades later, those melodies are still etched in our minds. Even today, when my sisters and I take road trips together, these are the songs we find ourselves playing, singing along to, and reminiscing about. Songs like “Dhadakte Dil Ki Tamanna Ho Mera Pyaar Ho Tum” , “Nuktacheen hai gam-e dil”, “Yeh Zindagi Usi Ki Hai Jo Kisi Ka Ho Gaya” and several others remain the tracks we play on repeat.
Bollywood music has evolved tremendously over the years, and we enjoy many of the newer songs as well. But there is something timeless about those old melodies. They carry with them not just beautiful music, but memories of childhood, family, and simpler times. For my sisters and me, they are just pure gold — treasures that have only grown more precious with the passing years.
