Every time, day and night, the shops play music. At times you even cannot hear your own voice. Each of the shops on the Adda owns a music system. Every one competes with the rest in loudness. Business sense dictates that the music be noisy enough to invite the attention of potential buyers. I do not know what it is about this place but everyone here seems to enjoy the noise. Without it, there would be no Mishri Mor," says Nawaz, a barber and proud owner of 'the Loudest Tape Recorder'. Despite being locally assembled and crude looking, his apparatus can outlast the rest. He has also placed a Public Address System with its speakers facing different directions outside the shop. His shop is adorned with the pictures of almost all of the famous faces of the Bollywood, Lollywood and some from Hollywood.
Though the buses stop here, the music does not. The digital revolution is affecting the way people listen, buy and enjoy music everywhere but not here. It may look like a strange choice but Mishri Mor is one of the best places to study the latest music trends in our rural culture in the Central Punjab. It has no warehouse or studio of some recording company. Rather, it is an open market complex spread over 700 square yards with 60 odd shops from a hotel to a barbershop to a music centre and a vehicle repairing facility. A vender Khushi sells Bhujiya Channa to passengers and earns anything "between rupees 100/- to rupees 150/- daily," he told happily.
You can hear a mile away: Surayya Multanikar or Hadiqa Kiyani, Atta Ullah Essa Kkelvi or Shezad Roy, folk, classical and even English music and songs. You name it; you will hear it in a boom that you could call the Mishri Mor fusion.
A third of the makeshift shops stock audiocassettes for sale. If the Public Call Office (PCO: equipped with mobile telephone because PTC has yet not made up to that remote location) cannot give you the track from 'Oh Kehndi Ae Sayan Main Teri Aan, hay' the fruit vendor certainly will. "We are generally ahead of anyone in these parts as far as getting the latest albums are concerned," says young Mian Khan, a PCO proprietor. He has the stock of over 500 cassettes and says, "The sale of cassettes is far more than the income from telephone. Acquiring latest music albums is easy. I get them through drivers who ply on these routes and stop here every time."
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