Gramophone Days

"Rusty noticed the sounds because he was happy and a happy person notices things."

There is a gramophone that has been lying here in shimla for I don't know how long, lets just say it's been around for many many years. But yesterday was the first time I ever heard music from it. 

We dusted it and placed it in the middle of the room, then very patiently took out all the records lying in the cupboard. Just reading some of the titles and holding things so old made my heart so full with joy. There were old urdu songs and qawwalis, old punjabi and urdu comedy records, Mohammad Rafi songs, some cliff richards tracks and I was so thrilled when I found an old Beatles one which had eight days a week on it.  

We sat for an hour or so, all on the drawing room carpet, experiencing something that was probably the a routine part of lives some years ago. This is what I love about history. When you scale it down, forget civilisations and cultural patterns, focus how one life lived, how they stood where we are at the present standing, what they must have felt viewing the same things we are. I love this one on one, this immediate connection that forms when you see something so old. 

A little part of that history becomes us and lives on longer through us.