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Raj Chengappa

21 UP
Viva la Radio

"This is All India Radio. The news read by ¦" For those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, that familiar introduction said in a deep baritone was our window to not just happenings in India but the world over. The first time I heard it, it was on a Grundig radio when I was all but four in Bangalore. The stations my radio could receive were exotic: Calicut, Cuttack, Lahore, Rangoon, Tokyo and Moscow to name just a few. The giant valves in the set would take time to heat up before it came on and even those few seconds seemed endless when it was time for cricket commentary by the famed Melville D'Mello. Early in the morning, the street that I lived on resounded with strains of Venkateshwara Suprabatham by M.S. Subbalakshmi.

As I grew up, listening to the news at 9 p.m. became a family habit centred on the radio. By then, we had acquired a National "transistor" radio that was small but powerful. But by the time I was in my 20s, the radio was beginning to become redundant with the invasion of television. It came along as part of our two-in-one systems. My wife and I turned to it occasionally, Vividh Bharathi taking us back to our college days.

So last week, when All India Radio invited me for a half-hour panel discussion, I agreed more out of a sense of nostalgia. Even though the topic, "Agenda for a Vigilant Nation", was dull and too high-sounding. The AIR headquarters on Delhi's Parliament Street has a quaint, old-fashioned air about it. The revolution in mass media may have knocked the radio station out of its place of pride but it was still a privilege to stride through those corridors. Especially when distinguished Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit, my co-panelist, told me that way back in 1962 he had ushered the late prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the studio in which our recording was to be done. This was when a defeated Nehru made his bitter speech about the Chinese debacle. Inside the studio, everything was a period piece: right from the ornate chairs that we sat on and the suspended microphone we spoke into, to the clock that ticked away.

The next morning, as I woke up and looked across at my four-year-old son, I wondered what kind of memories he would have of the mass media when he grows up. No hiss and static of radio. Only the primeval scream of the modem of my computer, as he watched me go through my morning ritual of accessing e-mail. No soothing morning ragas. Only the clanging and banging of Cartoon Network and the innumerable other entertainment programmes on television and the Internet. News, he will remember, was not derived from a single source but a bewildering array of channels whether CNN, BBC, DD, Star News or Zee News.

So is the radio as dead as a dodo for him? My prediction: no way. In fact it is making a strong comeback especially with FM channels gaining popularity. These days, I find my 13-year-old daughter tuning to the radio on our stereo system more often than viewing television. Only instead of the solemn: "This is All India Radio ¦", now the station identification is a catchy jingle. With private FM stations in the offing, I suspect, the radio is going to make a strong comeback in all our lives. Viva la Radio.

(Raj Chengappa is Deputy Editor, INDIA TODAY and author of Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India's Quest to be a Nuclear Power.) He is based in Delhi. Write to Raj Chengappa.)

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