Radio Days

My parents were married in Febraury 1960 in my mother's family home at Madras. My sister and self apart, the family also aquired a valuable wedding present on that occassion. I do not know who presented it, but whoever did it, and I hope he or she is alive somewhere was there through his present everyday in our living room and in our hearts forever. I am of course refering to the family radio set, A murphy radio made out of vaccum tubes. In all our growing up years, it stood majestically in the corner of our living room. Placed on the top of a table specially designated for it and a moda in front of it so that the listener may sit and operate it. It was a short wave radio and in size it was comparable to our modern day 13 inch television sets. The picture stands in front of me even today. The entire radio set with all its knobs and controls. There were four knobs, black and made in solid fashion. One Knob labelled on/off was used to turn the radio on and off. The second knob was the tuning control. As you moved it, you could see a glass cursor moving majestically across the amber and black panel of the radio set. The panel itself was etched with the names of radio stations from London to Ankara to Madras to Gauhati. Apparently the tuning frequencies of these radio stations at the time the radio was manufactured. The next control was the volume control and finally the last control was the band switcher. It had a G(I never knew and still dont know what G stood for), a M(for medium wave... this is where the radio was set when we listened to local stations) and then the numbers 41 31 19 13 refering to the meter bands on shortwave etched on the knob. As I sit today several thousand miles away from home, my memories of dad are inseparable from the radio. Murphy(as i will often refer to the radio in the lines that follow) was my dad's best friend. For a man of very few needs, this was an obsession and an addiction. He became a child in front of it. Sitting on the Moda, he would tune in to in 9 O clock news every evening to listen to Lokita Ratnam every evening, taking away from me 15 minutes of tamil film music that I would have otherwise listened to. Waiting for the news to end, I would wait so that I could listen to my drama serial in tamil "vannachudal" which ran for the next 15 minutes. From then on however hard I laughed or cried the radio was his until we all retired for the night. Tuning on to commentaries or news world wide, dad would be on to the BBC or Radio Australia or even Radio Peeking's tamil program(yes there was one) until the radio waves tired him out and he retired. The mornings were of course his monopoly on the radio and we seldom protested thanks to the school rush. It was the 7 O clock news in Tamil and the 8 0 clock news which pretty much repeated what the 7 o clock said and dad listened to it again in rapt attention as though it was an entirely new set of news. Come election time, he lived on the moda as he listned to news bulletin after news bulletin and when they were not on, tuned to the BBC which often pre-announced the election trends much before AIR came around to revealing the loosers. A classic case in point was the defeat of Indira and Sanjay in the 1977 elections. It is inevitable that such news inundation is bound to influence all. I certainly over time have become the chip of the old block and find myself reading multiple newspapers for the same news. Yet my use of radio was something different. I listened to music on it. Tamil film songs of the 60's and the 70's. It was a fascinating experience to listen to the requests of Cholanadu Chandramohan, Kulitalai Durai and the usual requesters who relegiously wrote to AIR to get their requests played. Ungal viruppam and Rasigar Thein Kinnam were my favorites. In adolescence and constantly in love with women with whom relationships only existed in the figment of my imagination, the songs created an atmosphere where such fantasy played back as reality. I would oft be sitting in front of the Moda, dreaming romantically about something and suddenly cholanadu chandramohan's request would play as though to tell me "Ninapath ellam Nadanthu vittal deivam yethum illai(If all that we desire happens then what role does god have to play)" and fill me with philosophical emotion, or in an excessively romantic mood "Malarodu thaniyaga naan ingu vanthaen". Sometimes I would think of a tune, not in any mood, just think of a tune and wish they would play it and lo it would be the next song. The beauty of it was the surprise element associated with the playing of the song. Today every song for every mood is with me on tape of CD. However the effect is lost, just as the effect of watching a movie on full screen is robbed as I watch schindler's list on home video. Cricket season would come and the radio would become a real bone of contention. There was no television and one had to rely on Anand Rao's or John Arlott's commentary. If the match was played abroad, in a place like the west indies, the sense of desparation was very high. I had to have my ears glued to the set as I gently tuned it for even a feeble pickup and often dissapointed. Murphy apart from providing our family with all our entertainment also served another role. He was the maternity ward for lot of cockroach babies. The warmth provided the ambience for the birth of lots of baby cockroaches, who finally made their way to the family kitchen. Once everywhile the murphy would would stumble and an occasional tube would would pop off. Nothing got as much attention as murphy when he fell sick. Even our illnesses sometimes were not attended as fast. Dad would initially try to see if he could put life back into in, failing which a local radio mechanic would be called to fix the radio immediately. The days that the radio was at his doctors, dad would walk up and down restlessly waiting for Murphy to come back home. All addictions apart, murphy never intruded into our normal lives. There was always living room conversation and we never hurried back home to pay our allegience to it as boys growing up in India do now to see their favorite TV programs. There was always the occasional transistor a portable version of murphy that would accompany us in conversations along the roadside or on the beach. Like everything else, the era of murphy came to an end. After years of reluctance my dad finally bought a TV set. He was probably the last in our neighbourhood to sign on to the idiot box. I had left home and the country by then and somehow on one of my trips back home I noticed that he was not there anymore. Until today I have not paused to ask where it went and maybe I should when I call dad the next time around. Today my father has changed relegions and the television set has become his constant companion. He is retired and sits in front of it, day in and day out watching every possible junk that plays on it. Its his world of Star TV, Sun TV, Doordarshan and all. He does not even own a radio set, I do and listen to it for I hate the idiot box. What a move from the innocence of Radio and Lokita Ratnam to packaged news on television.