Ode to my BOSE AM 5's

I came to Dubai more than twenty years ago with only two ambitions. Like most others at the time, I wanted to work here for a couple of years, to get a bit of International exposure, and get away from the familiar back home. However, the bigger drivers for me were, firstly to catch up on the years of earnings (and savings) that I had lost out on, during my Article ship days. This is the three years of mandatory internship, as part of the Chartered Accountants course, during which time one gets paid nothing and is made to work really hard in the name of gaining experience. A fantastic resource pool for the Accounting Firms who manage to make money on the sweat of (basically) bonded labour.

The second ambition was to return home with a really good music system. I did buy a good hi-fi system at the end of my first year in Dubai, in line with that dream, but after that life did not take the turn as planned. Anyway, this brings me to the real subject of this blog.

From the time my first pay-check hit my Bank account in Dubai, I started the hunt for this music system. Coming from India, which at the time was a closed economy, the choice and range was unbelievable, and I was in no hurry. I used to walk to the various distributor stores, and attend exhibitions to look at what was available and within my budget. The first time I saw the Bose AM 5's, was in 1989 at Al Ghurair Center. There was an Electronics exposition going on, and walking around I chanced to hear and see these cube speakers for the first time. And it was love at first sight (or is it sound?). I just could not believe that something so small could pack the punch and sound the way they did. All other speakers paled into insignificance, and my love affair with them started that day. After that it was only a matter of matching a system that could do justice to these speakers.

It took me almost a year after that day, to actually buy the system, mostly because I wanted to buy it as close to my departure date going back home. The music system at the time cost me almost two months wages and I did not have the liquidity to buy it outright. I had to take a loan from the Bank and paid it off over six months. I remember picking up the speakers myself, though they were to be delivered by the Dealer, and sitting with the delivery man in the cab as I just could not wait. I still distinctly remember the traffic jam on Makhtoum Street that afternoon that made a ten minute journey take an hour. I will not forget the inability of the delivery man to fix the speaker brackets on the wall of that apartment, as he had come with the wrong drill-set. And what should have taken a few minutes to set up took three hours. It was as if from the very beginning this system wanted to take it slow, as if it knew it would spend the rest of its life with me. As if it wanted be to be patient about the innumerable hours, days, weeks, months and years of pleasure that this hi-fi system gave me.

For the last year and a half however, it has been in storage, as we have replaced it, not with better, but smaller and more ergonomic music systems. My wife has been on my case to get rid of it for the longest time, as it is big and bulky and just gathering dust. I have toyed with the idea of selling it, but my heart has just not been in it. I advertised it, but at a price that was so high that no one would call. I have tried more ardently to give it away to anyone I know, but really no one is interested in a twenty odd year music system.

Then last week I advertised the Bose speakers separately, and as expected I got a lot of interest, and this weekend they will be sold. Since they have been lying around in storage, and to make sure that I did not sell speakers that did not work, I decided to reconnect them to the system. It was a tedious task, and after almost an hour of dusting, reconnecting and wiring, I saw my music system come alive, with a little beep and a multitude of lights. I felt a surge of pride that even after a year in open-storage; the hi-fi had the heart to come on without a fuss.

As luck would have it, there was already a CD inside, which saved me a trip back up to my apartment. As I pressed the play button, the sound of Pink Floyd - The Wall filled my store room. I cranked up the volume and as I walked out to my car the music started to engulf me in the parking. It was as if the system and the speakers knew that this was their last performance for me, and wanted to make it magical. Twenty one years of association were to be severed, and my system wanted to make it memorable. It seemed to me also that the hi-fi and the Bose speakers knew that they were to be parted too, and wanted to make their last sound together rapturous. The hi-fi without the speakers would be junked; it knew that and wanted me to know that that did not mean that it was useless. Honestly, I have never heard the Wall sound so beautiful or pure, as I did standing in that garage, lost in my memories.

My family cannot understand this bond and love that I have for a piece of electronic equipment. My entire life in Dubai is intertwined with it, as it is the last thing that directly connects the memories of a middle aged man today, to the wide eyed youth who came to Dubai twenty two years ago.  Memories of parties, birthdays, celebrations, occasions and the gradual accretion of family and friends, some still here and many having moved on, all have a strong thread of connection through the music played on this same system.

It has moved with me so many times, faithfully come on when needed and made a home for me in so many places. It has never given me a day of trouble, never been repaired, or felt the touch of a strangers hand on its console. It has silently stood there in the background, ready to come on at the press of a button, to either uplift me or calm me through its songs. And this Friday it will be gone!

But I will have the memory of the last virtuoso performance in the garage, and the heaviness in my heart as I dismembered a faithful family member and unplugged my past with the flick of a switch. Maybe that is the way it is meant to be – maybe we are meant to sever the umbilical cords that root us to our past, and most times it is hard, but sometimes it is gut wrenchingly difficult.