Varsha Pillai, New Delhi: When was the last time you heard to a piece of music on anything that wasn’t digital?

Taking an audio-visual trip down memory lane would help but it would be better paying a visit in an exhibition that chronicles the evolution of music records in India.

From the way a singer had to shout and scream to record a song to a time when the microphone made things simpler and more audible.

From India's first EP for Raj Kapoor's film, Shri 420 to the last one for a relatively obscure film called Zidd.

From K L Saigal's classic songs to the hit tunes from our new Hindi films, the exhibition at the Birla Gallery of Art and Culture traces the evolution of one hundred years of history from the gramophone to the turntable, from the LP to the audio cassette to the CD.

"They didn’t have microphones and they didn’t have amplifiers. One had to scream to the paper in order to be recorded until one realised that one couldn’t get the finer and subtler nuances in music," says activist Kushal Gopalka.

There is no doubt that my iPod sounds much better than this, but to listen to a piece of music on this 1920's gramophone is a treat, because of the nostalgic value.