Kalimpong Calling

Confessions of a RadioHead

The seventh essay from my 2002 book Kalimpong Calling.

Before the advent of television and the Internet, there was hardly a household in the hills untouched by the strains of Radio Nepal’s signature tune or the famously stylish delivery of Ameen Sayani, as he counted down Hindi film hits on Binaca Geetmala from Radio Ceylon.

I do not belong to the generation that truly grew up on radio, for by the time entertainment became a serious matter in my life, television had already penetrated the hills. Yet the radio still holds a special place in my memory.

The main reason I am such a devotee of radio has always been economy. The airwaves — like oxygen, sunlight, and rain — are free. The sets are affordable. And the sheer number of stations one could tune into was the clincher. Long before Springsteen sang “57 channels and nothing on,” the radio was offering a smorgasbord of sounds: VOA jazz programmes, BBC World news, Narayan Gopal on Radio Nepal, and cricket commentary.

The radio was also portable. You could carry it to the staff room to catch commentary, or to the fields when keeping night watch during harvest. In fact, in rural India the cycle and the radio were metaphors of modernity, symbols of mobility as much as of leisure. Generations of dehatis boogied in fields with transistor sets on their shoulders long before advertisements made the Walkman cool.

At our house, the most prized possession was a Bush radio with a large tuning knob. I remember evenings spent trying to figure out the mysteries inside the box that made all those sounds. Later, during insomniac nights, I would turn to the dial and roam through Hindustani classical programmes on AIR, phone-ins on VOA, Dutch Radio, or Radio Deutsche Welle. It was a veritable Babel, where the turn of a knob could let you tour the world linguistically.

One programme stood out: the AIR broadcasts in which Gurkha soldiers read letters to their families back in remote Nepali villages. I confess I derived a strange delight in eavesdropping on their mundane concerns, relayed across miles, voices laden with longing and affection.

Today the radio has largely disappeared, overtaken by its more glamorous cousin, television. Yet even now, during walks in the villages, I sometimes catch a familiar melody wafting out of a neighbour’s set. It fills me with nostalgia — and I am reminded of that old Carpenter’s hit:

When I was young
I’d listen to the radio
Waiting for my favourite song...

Those were happy times, and though they are gone, the memory remains.