Radio Days: Indian Edition
I was never a radio buff. I did not have a favourite station or a favourite show that I tuned in to regularly but the soundtrack of my early years is defined by the Radio.
You couldn't go anywhere in Calcutta without hearing a radio playing somewhere. I'm sure the acute power shortages that left millions without electricity for hours had something to do with it. The only thing that worked most of the time was a battery-powered radio.
The apartment we lived in in Calcutta was on the ground floor and had windows on all sides. You could go from room to room listening to a different neighbour's radio (or the radio of a passer-by) - old songs, current hits, the news, an interview with someone famous...
The only radio in our house belonged to my uncle and he would turn it on every morning to listen to the news, first in Hindi and then in English while he shaved and brushed his teeth in front of the hallway mirror.
Mostly, though, it was songs. Hindi songs from every Bollywood era. Before each song the presenter would read the name of everyone who had requested the song, where they were from and then a long list of people that the song was dedicated to (and where they were from). All the requests were write-in requests in those days so it was unlikely that any names were going to get missed.
The dedications sometimes ran longer than the song itself. The announcer always read out every town or place name - I wouldn't have ever heard of half these places if it weren't for the radio.
Probably the most famous place that nobody had ever heard of before Radio was a place called Jhumri Talaiya. It became famous for sending in an inordinately large number of dedications for a small village. It eventually made it into popular culture and even into Bollywood dialogue. I recently found this blog post about it and this entry has really just been a shameless excuse to link to it (-:
It's a somewhat fanciful post that I found charming. To clarify some of the references in the linked post, 'farmaish' means 'request' in Urdu. Ameen Sayani was once India's most famous radio presenter and 'Binaca Geetmala' was the name of a popular radio show that ran for decades.
You couldn't go anywhere in Calcutta without hearing a radio playing somewhere. I'm sure the acute power shortages that left millions without electricity for hours had something to do with it. The only thing that worked most of the time was a battery-powered radio.
The apartment we lived in in Calcutta was on the ground floor and had windows on all sides. You could go from room to room listening to a different neighbour's radio (or the radio of a passer-by) - old songs, current hits, the news, an interview with someone famous...
The only radio in our house belonged to my uncle and he would turn it on every morning to listen to the news, first in Hindi and then in English while he shaved and brushed his teeth in front of the hallway mirror.
Mostly, though, it was songs. Hindi songs from every Bollywood era. Before each song the presenter would read the name of everyone who had requested the song, where they were from and then a long list of people that the song was dedicated to (and where they were from). All the requests were write-in requests in those days so it was unlikely that any names were going to get missed.
The dedications sometimes ran longer than the song itself. The announcer always read out every town or place name - I wouldn't have ever heard of half these places if it weren't for the radio.
Probably the most famous place that nobody had ever heard of before Radio was a place called Jhumri Talaiya. It became famous for sending in an inordinately large number of dedications for a small village. It eventually made it into popular culture and even into Bollywood dialogue. I recently found this blog post about it and this entry has really just been a shameless excuse to link to it (-:
It's a somewhat fanciful post that I found charming. To clarify some of the references in the linked post, 'farmaish' means 'request' in Urdu. Ameen Sayani was once India's most famous radio presenter and 'Binaca Geetmala' was the name of a popular radio show that ran for decades.
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