I have a special fondness for Radio. The GenX people might scoff at this for they are brought up on a diet of Television commercials and serials.
This has nothing to do with nostalgia. I have found TV news to be contrived, more often the news is because of the visuals and not the other way around as it should be. Radio cannot afford that. Their news and other programming has to hold the listeners attention through sheer quality of the contents and delivery. I remember walking into the legendary AIR Calicut Station in 1985 to do a Yuvavani program. Everyone there had passed an audition test and spoke in voices that had command and dripping with honey depending on whether they were male or female. This gave an inferiority complex to a guy like me with a squeaky nasal voice.
The cricket commentary floating through SW 17 or 19 from Radio Australia or SW 31 or 25 through BBC World Service Test Match Special, the Wimbledon Commentary on BBC that took us through Bjorn Borgs epic final with McEnroe or the Football commentaries brought the game to our house and mind.
When I was in the primary school, we had a GEC valve radio kept on top of a wooden cup board. I used to drag a chair, climb on top of it to listen to the faint signals at 5.30 am in the morning. Nothing would induce me to move till the players broke for lunch of tea.
In retrospect, it is the hundreds of hours that I spent listening to the radio that enabled me to speak reasonably good english in the later stages of the life, for I never studied in a Convent and had my initial schooling in Malayalam medium. The Government Schools and Colleges never required you to speak in English in Kerala.
Much later in my life, while doing MBA, my Bush Transistor radio was my constant companion. I heard countless carnatic music concerts on it. The radio was the companion during the lonely hostel life away from home and the pocket radio during long journeys and of course during boring chemistry classes (we used to sit in the back bench listening to commentary in the class with the pocket radio glued to the ears and to think that I dont allow my students to even look at mobile phones during my classes these days makes me smile ruefully).
Then the radio vanished from my life for nearly 15 years, as I was caught up in the enthusiasm for the TV, like everyone else. The MW stations and SW stations were a thing of the past.
Then the radio reinvented itself in the FM format. Radio evolved into a beautiful chatty commercial medium, which is something television cannot do for commercial reasons, and I started enjoying the companionship it gave during long drives. The Radio chat shows gives amazing insight into various topics which the TV cannot. TV programs are superficial and lacks critical analysis. They dont make you think. But radio do. In India, the FM musical stations have become extremely popular and a boon for the rural population/truck/taxi drivers. With even the basic phones supporting FM reception, Radio is on the way back as the best medium to listen to music, news and other programs for people on the move.
Don't believe me? If you are in Kuwait, tune to 100.1 FM and listen to BBC in English for a week while you are driving. If you are not hooked to it by the end of the week, I will be quite surprised.
