Around the world sitting at home: The beginnings

No, this is not about the Internet! I haven’t really come of age for that. Instead, I will be writing on our good old Radio. 

Growing up in early 90s, we were one of those rare households in neighborhood who owned a television set. Neighbors would come over to watch episodes of the great mythological dramas like Ramayana, Mahabharata, and so on. These dramas and a daily dose of news aside, there was nothing much to watch on the television. The primary medium of entertainment was still the radio. Being a big fan of All India Radio (AlR) and Vividh Bharati, my mom’s daily routine was tuned according to the shows on the radio. Her day would start with the famous sound of 'Yeh Akashwani hai! '. I, on the other hand, used to hate it because the content largely included either some random talk shows, messages released in public interest, or some classical (old) Bollywood music. However, over time, I ended up developing a liking for shows such as Geetmala, Jaimala, and Sadabahar Nagme. What the heck?! I even listened quite a bit of Sakhi Saheli — daily afternoon show for housewives. 

Late 90s saw a growth of cable television. Many more options of entertainment opened up. There was ESPN, Zee, Sony, and so on. Radio, which once was so indispensable, was no longer necessary. This, though, changed again when I shifted to a boarding school in 2002. Initial days of my hostel life were like a hell. (I should write up on some of those interesting experiences.) Being an introvert, it took me a long time to make new friends. Until then, the time seemed to go by so slowly. That was when, on my birthday, my mom gave me a gift I will never forget — A radio transistor!

Even though the radio still offered a limited choice, I believe I was matured enough by then to appreciate what was on offer. The programs were not as boring as I perceived them to be as a kid. Another development that happened around that time was the government’s move to open up FM spectrum for private players. To me, it meant addition of one more channel that mostly played music of the recent times.

Although our hostel had a TV set in a common room, I never needed it except for some live coverage of cricket matches. Every ODI game was like a festival in the hostel and I couldn’t possibly have stayed away from it. Mention of cricket brings me to the main topic of this article — how I travelled around the world sitting at home. 

Some of the cricket games, especially test matches, were not covered by national TV broadcaster. But the AIR would have a live commentary feed of most games. So in case a game was not televised, I used to tune into the radio. I soon found that, it’s not only AIR that covers the games, but the BBC radio and Australian radio also had a very good commentary feed. Just out of curiosity, I tried tuning to these channels on short waves, but unfortunately could never manage to get the signal. They said that that’s the air pollution causing the lost signals. Maybe true! However, one day, while tuning for some cricket commentary, I caught a signal that sounded foreign. They were broadcasting some news. After a while, they translated the same news in Hindi. It was being broadcasted all the way from Russia. After the news, they had a round of discussion analyzing political scenarios in Russia for a while. Then, the presenters read out a bunch of letters sent in by listeners from all over India. They concluded the one hour program by an old Raj Kapoor number, an apt one for Russian listeners! (Check this link out to know why.) They mentioned in the closing that the program was aired for an hour every day as part of some India-Russia friendship agreement. However, despite many attempts, this was the only time I could tune in to it. Possibly, they are still airing it.

This is a little story of the beginnings of my exploration. I used that transistor for a good 10 odd years. It traveled from Pune to Bangalore where there was a richer choice in channels having a good mix of quality music and an interaction with listeners. All this while, internet was spreading big time. The radio channels worldwide had started airing their programs online. This helped me a big deal since I no longer needed to tune my little transistor. My exploration took a giant leap. More on it in the next part. Stay tuned!

Link to part 2.