Purple Rain hit stores and screens in 1984. That was the year Apple put the first Macintosh personal computer on sale in America, Rakesh Sharma was launched into space, Indira Gandhi was assassinated and Mark Zuckerberg was born. A lifetime ago. And yet, that is the album most fans of the legendary Prince turned to on April 21 this year, on hearing of his passing. They did this presumably because few Pop albums have managed to attract listeners across genres and geographies the way it did back then and continues to do so today.

Let's Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain, Alan Light, Simon & Schuster, Rs 399. Available in leading bookstores and estores