Join us as we bid adieu to Rhythm House at Fort, the mecca for music lovers in this city
Pretty soon, walking along the quaint streets of Fort won't be the same. As you turn the quiet corner at K. Dubash Marg, the renowned Rhythm House won't be there to welcome you with open arms. A post on the store's website took Mumbai by shock when it announced that it will be closing its doors at the end of February.
The store will leave behind its 68-year-old legacy and a good amount of loyal customers, who will sorely miss the ambiance and the authentic album collections in Hindi, English, Marathi and several regional languages; music-related magazines and music and movie CDs in endless genres, just to name a few. Availability of collectibles is cited as one of the main reasons why customers like to frequent the store often.
Gaining loyalists along the way
It only seems fit, therefore, to take a walk down memory lane and muse over why so many Mumbaikars loved this store that much. To this, Lionel Faleiro, who's been frequenting the store for 20 years now and is disheartened about the sad news, says, “The fact that they had everything from movies to music to video games under one roof, plus a large catalogue of items, which was always available, secured my loyalty. I would always walk into the store and find everything I needed here,” he says. “In fact, things that are not available online would be found here,” adds Faleiro, which seems contrary to the main reason cited for its closing—that the challenges posed by new technology and piracy were hard to beat.
Another Rhythm House loyalist is Chirayu Vedekar, who revels in music and is a bass player by profession. “During my years at Elphinstone College, which was right across the street, most of the trips to the place were about getting a chance to use the 3 CD changer and that beautiful high-end pair of Bose headphones, because just like any other college student, my allowance didn't allow me to purchase imported music CDs. It's safe to say that I visited the place for almost a decade,” he muses. To come to terms with the fact that the last surviving and much-loved music store in the city is finally calling it quits, makes one morose, if not worse, but the truth, as Vedekar rightly points out, is that digital has won the fight against physical.
Another Rhythm House aficionado who doesn't let distance taint his loyalty to this music store is Vinay Aravind, who after moving to Chennai, still makes it a point to visit the store every time he visits Mumbai. “Even though I don't live in Mumbai, I still make it a point to buy CDs from there. The last time I was there, I bought about 25 CDs,” he quips, proudly.
Other alternatives
With no other choice than to look for other sources to buy music, movies and rare collectibles from, Mumbaikars are now turning to the inevitable—the World Wide Web.
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