The Echoes of Boomers

It's 2022, and we're in a JBL electronics store looking to buy a big home theater. I'd always wanted one as a kid—boy toys, you see 🙂. It was costing $2,500, so we kept pushing the date. This time, we were almost there. Then we said to ourselves, "Let's get the measurements of the apartment done first, and then we'll order."

Fast forward to 2024, we were in Mysore, and I was looking through some old stuff kept in Dad's store (my father-in-law). I found a Creative 2.1 speaker. I tried connecting it to my OLED TV, but it was giving off noise. So, I called some numbers from Google Maps suggestions for speaker repair.

The person on the phone said that he didn’t fix speakers, but there was no other number that was responding in the vicinity, so I took my speakers and just went to this shop. Once I arrived, there was this uncle in his sixties, cleaning his very small shop which had a zillion electronic devices in it.

The moment he looked at me, I knew I was going to get a scolding. I patiently waited for him to finish and didn't utter a word. Once he finished all his cleaning, which took about five minutes, without even asking who I was or what I wanted, he said, “I told you I don’t do speakers.” Somehow, that small aberration felt particularly good. It was like I went back to the days when any uncle in the neighborhood could scold you.

But being in sales helps me in mysterious ways. So I said, “Sir, can you refer me to someone?” 🙂. He obliged and told me about a shop in the same market.

And this is exactly what he said: “There is a Ganesh temple near a lodge in that direction; the repair shop is near it.” Now, consider this, it’s a wholesale market and has thousands of shops, if you have ever visited Chandni Chowk—a mini version of that being Mysore.

I found this shop after talking to about eight to ten strangers, who had better things to do than help me. Then, finally, I found it. This shop was even more interesting. It was like a small workshop inside a house, so one couldn't tell if it existed from the outside unless someone pointed it out to you clearly.

I met another old-timer here, the owner of the shop, whose name is Mr. Sharma. I told him about my predicament of having this 2.1 speaker which sounds good but has a lot of static noise. As soon as he saw the old 2.1 speaker, he said, “Oh, this is one of those old ones,” and smiled.

He told me how electronics stuff made earlier were built to last, whereas these days companies don’t want you to use their products after two to three years. Once he opened the whole thing and found the part which needed replacement, he said, “There is a shop in the neighborhood by the name of Gupta Electronics; go there and buy this part.”

I was thinking to myself, “Can’t you go yourself and buy that part?” He somehow read my mind (this generation has some magical powers, I guess) and told me, “If I go there, Gupta ji won’t give me that part because I know the real price of it, and he’ll tell me it’s out of stock.”

So, once again, I was searching for a shop without Google Maps. This shop was easier to find as Gupta ji was popular in that market, as he had all the weird parts with him (no pun intended). I brought back that electronic part, and Sharma ji got to work.

While he was fixing the 2.1 speaker, we talked about what he saw when he visited IIT Kanpur, his interactions with the people of Kanpur, and the sweets there (my hometown, by the way). Sharma ji magically assembled the whole thing back with his soldering iron and screwdriver within about ten minutes and then told me to use the speaker in a certain way.

I came back home and attached the 2.1 speaker to my OLED TV, and bam! It sounded crazy good. Somehow, I gave up the idea of buying a JBL until this one would last.

I guess the whole fun of discovering these shops and the people running them, the interactions and the toil to get it fixed, made me value the 2.1 speaker much more now. Ikea effect, I guess?

Also, this generation of boomers had something about them. They saw things when it all started changing for us human beings (the '70s), in terms of markets opening up, new ideas everywhere, and have also learned from the Greatest Generation, which (Gen X, Millennials, and later) have largely missed.

We are somehow rediscovering what the previous generations had already figured out, like the value of organic farming, community events, face-to-face interactions, rituals, minimalism, etc.

As we closed out 2024, we lost many of these gems from the boomer’s generation. I hope we can keep the learnings with us that this generation gave us until the time we are here.

After all, Google Maps, like any other technology, has its limitations 🙂