Chromepet resident V. Chandra Sekhar began to collect gramophone records of Hindi songs in 1970 and never stopped.

An interest in Hindi film music led V. Chandra Sekhar, a forging consultant a passion, to collect more gramophone records.

He started the collection in 1970 and could not stop. And today, he has thousands of EP records and long-play records, 3,600 compact discs of Hindi and Tamil films, 350 digital video discs, a few English records and also ones on instrumental music, besides a collection of Carnatic and Hindustani music. He has also converted 4,000 audio cassettes into Mp3 files, thereby recording more than 20,000 songs in 18 months.

“I was born in 1948 in Chennai and my father, D. Vaidyanathan, was transferred to Bombay in the same year. I lived there till 1968. As I was fascinated with Hindi film music, my father bought me a record player,” says V. Chandra Sekhar.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> Downtown / by T. S. Atul Swaminathan / Chennai – November 01st, 2014