I was born in 1979 and went to a convent school in Mumbai. I loved poems and stories, and my teachers and parents found that it was a better way to teach me stuff. Singing nursery rhymes and songs to children, as young as babies, can help develop their language and communication skills from an early age.
In junior and senior kindergarten, they made me listen and say many nursery rhymes. We weren’t an English speaking family so the only way to remember the nursery rhymes, after school, was to hear them on an audio cassette.
Yes, friends from generation Y and Z, we had only audio cassettes then. MP3 wasn’t even in the dream.
Apart from not being from an English speaking family, we were from a lower-middle-class family and there was a dearth of resources. But we’d an audio cassette player and mother bought one audio cassette for me — for nursery rhymes. I grew up listening to that one cassette.
I’m 40 now, and I still listen to that one cassette. The voice from that cassette still keeps ringing in my head.
If you were born in the 70s or the 80s, generation X, you can relate to this blog post. Even if you’re from the generation Y or Z, you might have a clue of what I’m talking about.
Do you?
I’m talking about the legendary singer Preeti Sagar. I don’t think I know anyone — from my age — who haven’t grown up listening to her nursery rhymes. She’s a prolific singer with years and years of singing on her.
Millions of children in India have grown up listening to her nursery rhymes, and the count is going on. The above image is the cover of the audio cassette that millions like had in their homes in the 80s.
Today, we have nursery rhyme videos around the internet but back in those days, there was only the audio that had to do the magic. The music, the voice, the voice modulation, the tune, the melody, I mean everything had to be in such harmony to win the hearts of innocent children.
Preeti sure did a phenomenal job!
Most of my friends — who are parents — make sure that they make their children listen to the nursery rhymes they heard in their childhood. It’s a boon to have the internet in place.
I can’t stop myself from sharing some of her film songs that were huge hits in the olden days.
There are many articles on the internet about her, but this blog post is my personal experience as a growing child. Preeti was next to my mother, as I’ve heard the most after mother in my early days.
I’m sure that there was no one and will be no one like her who continues to touch the hearts of millions of children across the globe. I wish to meet her one day and take her autograph in my autograph book.
This is what legends do. They live the hearts of the past, the present, and the future generations.
Do you still have the cassette?
Nope.
Wow! It’s so amazing to see the cassette cover after so many years. I can totally relate to what you said. I’m one among them who grew listening to her nursery songs. There are hell lot of different versions of nursery songs now. But none of them have that heartwarming voice she had and the way she she sings. We had an auto Play tape which plays both sides without the need to change the cassette sides. I’m still in love with her voice and the way she sings. I badly wanted my child to listen to her version of rhymes. After a real long search I found them today. Thanks to your post I now know the name of the Voice I loved.
Thanks a lot 🙂