We Need Our CD Player, Please!

Two separate incidents within a month showed my dear wife and myself how technological advances with reference to music-listening can be an irritant or a major hindrance, depending on how desperate one is.  The pain experienced by us had a multiplier effect because all we were trying to do was to maintain status quo and listen to our music the way we have always done for the past 30 years.  And we were made to feel very guilty in that process.

First, our Bose Lifestyle system - CD Player and speakers with a sub-whoofer, which was a couple of decades old but was fully functional, decided to fade away suddenly.  Right in the middle of a song, it figured it had lived its life and had to call it a day; so went out with a `whoosh' -- no other notice of the impending disaster or indication of an ailment, let alone a terminal one.  We went to the experts, the Bose guys, who took less than ten minutes to confirm the system's demise - "You have to junk the whole lot, sir; there is no way we can repair this because parts are not available" was their diagnosis.  The look accompanying that fateful declaration was akin to what one would have had if one was looking at a picture of a Tyrannosaurus Rex or Diplodocus!  Without batting an eyelid or caring for the sea of remorse in which we were floating, they promptly busied themselves with attempting a fresh sale to us.  Pretty much like a marriage broker trying to induce interest in a second liaison in someone who was holding the ashes of his/her erstwhile partner.  We decided to carry the system back as if it were on a ventilator and needed some out-of-the-box solution from a conventional Jugaad specialist.  But that excursion also yielded no encouraging result.  That was the moment of realisation in us that the music system that lilted through the best part of our lives was history - gone!

Even as were in mourning, a friend who is blessed with the technological brilliance to make a business of cobbling up music systems from scratch, enthusiastically came on the scene.  He went into a rhapsody about all the contraptions he could bless us with, to enrich our listening experience.  He was almost delirious talking of brands, pieces of equipment, degrees of acoustic fidelity etc.  While most of the content of his delivery flew some thirty thousand feet above our head -- fortunately, without causing any bodily harm, I must confess -- we did comprehend that our way of listening to music had become antediluvian.  My wife made a valiant attempt to gently steer this friend towards telling us if we could stay with a basic, good CD player.  But to him that idea was simply anathema and he continued to rave, rant and froth around his mouth about hi-fidelity speakers in each room connected by Bluetooth with a slick digital platform, which played all music through a remote.  Even after we banished him from our home, we saw him walking to his car, furiously indulging in a monologue about the virtues of the music he could help us listen to.

Our primary worry was what to do with all the CDs and the priceless music we have accumulated over the years.  The mind boggling thought that we had to transfer all that music to some new gadget was a still-born because it was throttled without ceremony, by my wife.  She was adamant she just wanted another CD player, nothing more, nothing less.  She just could not level with the process of using a remote and a panel to identify a song to play; and said so in a tone which resonated with finality and brooked no resistance.  She reasoned that she knew her CDs well, with our superbly indexed storage and where to locate a song in a specific CD.  So, we went back to Bose and got a simple, glitzier CD Player!  And, all was well with the world and God was in his heaven!  So, we thought.

Within a couple of weeks, disaster struck again and the Panasonic CD Player/Radio which provided non-stop entertainment in the kitchen (almost like a tea-shop) decided to go kaput, in sympathy with the Bose, probably.  The earlier context was easier to handle because Bose replacement was the only solution we were looking at. Now, it got a bit more complicated because we did not require a Bose replacement, so the laborious search began forthwith for a suitable system.  When my sustained on-line forays did not throw many alternatives, we thought it was best to source something from an electronic store.  Our many jaunts through multiple shops confirmed our suspicion, vague to begin with but growing by the minute, that what we were looking for belonged to some long forgotten era.  We located one Philips CD/Radio, which was so anaemic that we were certain it could be carbon-dated to the same time our Bose was manufactured, some twenty years back.  The salesman mumbled there was only one brand, one model and what I was holding was the last specimen.  We could get a discount of 30% if we wanted to take it because it was the display piece.   He looked sympathetically at us and soothingly conveyed the clincher - "Nobody buys these things any more".  But we sensed that he wanted to be rid of that piece and move on in life, to some other less moribund, more exciting section of the store!

We decided it was beneath our dignity to take the last piece of the last model or the last brand and walked out, holding our heads high.  The kitchen is still without a CD/Radio and our housekeeper is very unhappy.  I, for one, can vouch that the quality of food coming out of that kitchen is not the same!