The history of my radio:

I was raised by my maternal grandparents. I grew up and did my schooling in my hometown. Those were the days when telephone (landline) connection hadn’t reached our home yet. Since it was a small town, it was an untold rule for everyone to be back home by 06.00.p.m. or the sunset hour in a general spoken sense. The town too would shut down between 07.00. to 08.00.p.m. So, if anyone was late to return home before the curfew hour meant they were in trouble and everyone else in the household would get worried. Post this hour, radio and the black-and-white display TV were part of our daily entertainment where the entire family sat together and listened / watched news, music, and talk-shows. Akashavani and Doordarshan, to be more specific. The radio was kept inside a ‘Radio potti’ (a wooden cabinet made specifically to keep the radio, Potti translates to a chest/box in Kodava) and the TV stood on the TV stand (yet another customized wooden table where the Television was placed). Well, the story of the TV for another post. Today, let us talk about the Radio.

Our radio was a ‘National Ecko, 1960s make’. So, that means, it was at home even before I was born. But, by the time I was in primary school, only two people in the house had the permission / knowledge to operate the radio- My grandfather and me. There might be no specific reason for this privilege, that is all I recollect now. Maybe because my grandfather was the seniormost person in the house and did not believe that anyone else could be careful about operating the radio (a proud possession in those days) or it could simply be because no one else in the house wanted to put effort to move their butts and operate it and they were comfortable in simply giving orders to play or change channels. Whatever it was, the quality time when the entire family gathered in my grandparents’ bedroom, warming themselves around a room heater, listening and conversing around the content played in the radio have been very fond and memorable to me.

Years passed and my grandfather left us. More modern radios and colour TVs took over the house and the world. A few more years passed, and the good old radio was shown its place in the attic. Finding place in the attic of a traditional home in Coorg meant being discarded and regarded as useless. Attics were usually used as warehouse for old, unused goods of the household and as storerooms for food-grains for the coming seasons. Two decades passed and the radio and its TV sibling were forgotten that they were veteran entertainers of the home sitting in the attic. One fine day in 2018, on a casual walk on the attic my eyes accidentally fell on the radio. The dust and moisture of years had taken over the radio feeding and breeding fungi, termites, and roaches. A volcano of nostalgia had erupted within me when I decided to get it fixed before it would be erased from its physical existence.

Finding a radio repairer:

I wanted the radio to start playing again, that’s all I knew. I got it home to Bangalore assuming that there will be some experienced radio repairers in the metropolitan city. I searched around a bit and enquired with friends who live in the old city area of ‘Pete’ and Shivajinagar. I visited a guy in the inside lanes of ‘Pete’ who assured to repair it in a week’s time. A few weeks passed without hearing from him. Upon enquiry, he said that he couldn’t find a part for it and would be willing to fix a modern equipment inside the vintage cabinet. His recommendation didn’t make sense to me. I carried it to a couple of other workshops with the ‘Radio repair’ board and they laughed at my pursuit. That’s when it struck to me that my radio required a good restoration and any repair wouldn’t help.

I googled some more and got contact numbers of professional restorers in other parts of India. The Mumbai numbers didn’t work. Another person from Hyderabad was featured in several newspapers. I decided to carry my radio to Hyderabad, meet him before handing over my radio to him. Taking the delicate equipment by bus or train would be difficult and I had to plan a long drive if I had to drive a car. There were several failed plans before I reached Hyderabad. Then, covid struck the world and India went under lockdown in 2020. Hyderabad was one of the worst hit and that added to my fear of travelling.

Then one fine day, I read an article on ‘Deccan Herald’ about a radio magician in Bangalore. “BANGALORE? Why hadn’t I heard about him before?” I thought. The article also carried his contact number for whoever wanted to get in touch with him. I guess that was the last try I had in my mind before giving up on my pursuit to bring a dead radio back alive. I dialed his number, and he told me to get the radio for an inspection. It was on 25th February 2022 that my radio had finally found a person who was willing to give a try on it. My brother had carried and handed over the radio to the radio magician.

Story continued as: The story of my radio part 2: A Radio Museum Visit in Bangalore