But who will face the music?

I always used to like instrumental music.

In the early seventies stereo music was catching up. Our business establishment was very close

to my house and I used to cycle down to my house to have lunch in the afternoons.

On the way back I used to stop for a while near a house from where I could hear some wonderful stereophonic instrumental music. I was crazy. I used to tell myself that my first major purchase would be a Philips stereo record player.

We used to do sub-contract work for Blue Star. One day the manager of Blue Star

Mr. Arunachallam told me that he was going away to Dubai and that he wanted to sell his

Philips Hi-Q International record player. When I told him of my interest in buying it he offered me to give it for Rs.1,000. He also told me that if I were to take the player from him, he would give free all his records. It was a god send, because he was a piano-accordian player and all of his records were instrumental hits by James Last, Ventures, Bert Kaempfert, Shadows and so on. Just type any one of these names in You Tube and listen. (Caution: You may get addicted.)

In our business we had a tacit understanding that partners will draw money only for bare essentials and all profits would be ploughed back into the business. Extra drawings were only for emergencies.

I told my senior partner and mentor Mr. Raghu Ram of my desire to purchase the record-player. A kind-hearted person, he however liked to play with words.

In this instance I was keen to play the music, whereas he played with words....

He said: You will get yourself the player, BUT WHO WILL FACE THE MUSIC?

For a moment I was dumb-struck.

After a while I managed to say, "We all will, Sir. We all will." I bought the music system and I along with my retinue of nephews used to listen endlessly to wonderful stereo music.