Today, the last day of July, is when Funai stops manufacturing VCRs. For those who thought that the VCR was dead already, no, this wasn't the case. Japan-based Funai was the last company left and now they too have shut shop citing lack of demand and difficulty in acquiring parts. The VCR is officially no more. If you grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s, the VCR was an essential part of childhood. It was, to use a cliché, our window to the world, that is to say - the world beyond Doordarshan.

The first time I experienced the joys of the VCR was in the Jehan Numa Palace Hotel in Bhopal. My parents were attending a poetry festival and I'd tagged along. The hotel had an in-house cable channel which played the James Bond film Octopussy on a loop. As it turns out, the second film I watched on a VCR was also a James Bond flick - Dr No. This was in Mumbai, at poet Adil Jussawalla's flat in Colaba. The rental was Rs 20. These were still early days for the VCR in India; not everybody had one.

My parents were never too keen on it. Every time we had to travel by bus somewhere, my father would make sure that it wasn't a 'video coach'. To him, a video coach meant a splitting headache. With me, it was more the fear of being left behind. In school, during morning assembly , the boys would talk amongst themselves about the latest films they'd watched, they knew the scenes and dialogues by heart - I felt I was missing out.

So I did the next best thing - go over to friends who had one. Renting VCRs was quite common in Allahabad when I was growing up. You could rent one by the hour. The idea was to cram as many films as possible into 12 or 18 hours. Friends, neighbours and relatives dropped in for these movie marathons. It was a communal affair.

Apart from the new Hindi blockbusters (all featuring Sridevi), there were certain films which were mandatory at every viewing session, like Jaani Dushman, the cornerstone of desi horror. From Pakistan, came the hit comedy Bakra Qiston Pe. The small-town middle class also built up its own canon of Hollywood favourites: Crocodile Dundee, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Ghostbusters, House of Wax and Evil Dead. The rise of the VCR coincided with the decline of cinema halls. Movie theatres became run down places where only unemployed youth went, not 'respectable' families.

Meanwhile, I kept pressing my parents for a VCR. When my mother had saved up some money from my father's salary, she decided to invest in a twin-tub non-automatic Greysham washing machine. I stomped my foot like Rumplestiltskin and scowled for days.

And then, manna from heaven. My grandmother bought a VCP - a Funai! The VCP was cheaper than a VCR but it did the job. Before the Funai, Dadiji and I spent entire summers in Dehradun, hopping from one cinema hall to another, watching whatever came our way: Khatron Ke Khiladi, Hatya, even Mohabbat Ke Dushman. We weren't choosy. But post-Funai, this changed. We joined lakhs of Indians in watching Aamir and Madhuri in Dil at home and not the theatre.

As Indians grew tired of the usual Hollywood fare, the video library in Dehradun also raised its game. 'People like us' would pore over Oscar nomination lists in the newspapers and ask for Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy and My Left Foot. We wanted Madonna Live in Japan. Somehow, the enterprising video store owner managed to get it all. In fact, we looked up to the friendly neighbourhood pirate as some kind of higher being who had special access to Hollywood and Bollywood. With fashionable long hair and earrings he even looked the part; we imagined him schmoozing with the stars. He was probably on first name terms with them. What else could explain Jurassic Park releasing in Venus Video Rental, Dehradun, the same day it was released in America?

The VCR remained an expensive luxury till the end, until Video Compact Discs came and changed the game. When burglars broke into Indian homes, they usually made away with gold, cash and the family VCR. Over in Los Angeles, in 1992, Dr Dre rapped about the race riots that followed the acquittal of the white cops who had beaten Rodney King: 'I got a VCR In the back of my car That I ganked from the Slauson Swap Meet.' If you were looting the streets, the VCR was top of the priority list.

Another thing I remember about the VCR is that wealthy folk who had video cameras, made home movies about their children and showed it to guests. Once a year our family was invited to dinner to the Sherwani residence, the Sherwanis being an old Allahabad family who owned GEEP torches and batteries. For starters, before the main course of tender mutton was served, we watched some home videos: basically the Sherwani kids tricycling in their leafy compound. The VCR had its cons.

In the mid-Noughties, when I was teaching at Doon School, I rekindled my relationship with my grandmother's Funai. It had been packed away in a Godrej almirah for some years. I managed to get it fixed and working again. The Doon School had an excellent VHS archive, which was slowly falling prey to fungus. I rescued tapes from there and watched Chinese and Japanese art house films, none of which I remember, except that the characters had a lasting stoic air about them.

The VCR, experts say, will never come back. It's not sexy like vinyl is. I tried plugging in my Funai yesterday, hoping it'd show signs of life. No such luck. It's dead as a doornail.

Mehrotra is the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India