Disha Goyal
Rewind a little, let time-travel back to the 1980s. Through the eucalyptus trees that surrounded a small neighbourhood where my mother grew up, you can hear in unison the tunes from a few houses that take pride in owning a radio and a small army of teens parading around them as soon as they hear the siren call of Ameen Sayani’s voice from a distance. It is hard to imagine there was a time when you could only listen to songs once a week yet there is my mom and I bet thousands from that generation like her, who eagerly waits to catch shows like Binaca Geetmala so that they can discuss it with their friends the next day at school.
Let’s take a bus and go to the crowded street where my grandfather has his shop. It is a challenge to find a place to walk here but there is the shop. You can tell because it is always filled by four or five fellow businessmen drinking tea and creating bonds with Akashwani in the background entertaining everybody who walks past the shop and creating awareness. Akashwani now stays in the time capsule of their minds with the smell of spices from my grandfather’s shop and the warmth of the afternoon.
We have some time to make it back home, come with me and you’ll find my grandmother in the veranda with all her neighborhood friends. The kids are at school and the husbands are at work. In the recess of their otherwise 24/7 job, they manage to knit, prep dinner, make snacks, and find solutions to each other’s and the world’s problems when they have Akashwani with them. It’s hard to imagine that people could socialize in such a way and have such loyalty to a single radio with a few shows when I sometimes end up watching two sitcoms almost simultaneously on my phone while texting my friends yet somehow these ladies have their little secret club that is just ordinary life for them but something to romanticize for me.
Well looks like it’s time to go back to 2023 again.
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