RADIO ACTIVITY

 RADIO ACTIVITY

My recent recalling of ‘Juke Box’ instantly opened my thought to what I lovingly describe as ‘Radio Activity’.  All the same I am duty bound to assure our friends that the topic has nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear radiation or any ionizing radiation potentially capable of extensive damage to ‘live’ systems. Despite the redoubled assurance that I place before friends, “potential damage to life” was foreseen by parents and grandparents some 50-60 years ago from the children’s radio activity. What! is a logical sigh from more modern readers than from friends of my age bracket.

‘Radio activity’ is a pet coinage of mine to suggest the then attitude of boys and girls to Radio at home. Too often they would defy the advice or warning by women folk, while did not dare the same defiance with elder men [father or grandfather]. The present generation of children may dismiss the details as ridiculous, for, they have no idea of what ‘restriction’ meant those days; these children represent true citizens of our independent nation. Such independence was unknown to us even when we were in the stages of secondary education. Yes, the restriction was rigid against the use of radio as a medium of entertainment by children.

Radio 

Unlike their later cousins-- the transistors, the then radios had a frontal face, quite elegant with tune-in dial which had a flat expanse with numbers printed much like in an alarm clock. Unlike the clock, the radio had just one needle [a pointer] to select a precise number signifying a station from where broadcast signals were ‘aired’ and received at home. Some dials were narrow horizontal panel printed in different colours to segregate stations on MW [Medium Wave] SW1 [Short Wave1] and SW2 [Short wave 2]. The elders of our times would not permit our tuning the radio even for getting to know ‘how to use?’ With all those exterior cosmetics, radios were designed with ‘valves’. The set of valves would take ‘warming up‘time before revealing life. Still, a radio was a radio. In fact, radio was a proud possession found in homes of Doctors, Judges and high officials and never in our houses. By late 1950s some agencies brought forward Installment[ Hire purchase] schemes tempting the then middle-class people to buy radio or folding chairs against some surety executed by at least 3 people with tangible employment. That way some houses bought radios for the declared purpose of listening to News – morning and evening daily and some good ‘classical music’ by noted artistes. “Nothing else” was a near domestic moratorium. For very many years, using a radio AT HOME was taxable on an annual basis. Radio tax was paid in local post office and a pass book was maintained. Also, a special receptor called aerial was required to help the radio to pick up signals. It was a long thin wire mesh double layered, running to a length of 20+ feet near the inner roof of the house and linked by a wire to the radio set.

Despite those hurdles to have a radio, people were always keen to possess one for hearing the ‘current’ news. Ironically, radios were never named Idiot boxes; for, they were shrewd though not intelligent. Yes, when the most critical segment of the news was ‘aired’, the radio in a house can ruin the message by a violent ‘grrrrrrr’ noise, believed to be atmospheric disturbance.  The current news would thus be faithfully goofed up and children hiding their delight would run to the backyard and heartily laugh at the incident; this was a sort of enjoying the elder men’s plight while denying us the use of radio.

 Anyhow, News and classical music never delighted us then. But, our interests were far removed from classics –be it literature or art. Listening to running commentary of Cricket Test match was a dream rarely fulfilled since our indulgence was confined to brief absence of elderly men from home. With no clear knowledge of tuning in a specific station, best part of the indulgence time was lost before ‘valves’ came to ‘life’ and in trying to locate the station- at times not recognizing that the game had a Tea break or had interruption by rain. Overseas matches had the nagging howl from long distance problems interfering with the human voice by a sweep of oh oh oh sound at regular intervals of every 40 seconds. Somehow our urge to know the score made us recognize the voice much like sieving the grain from chaff.

But cricket matches were infrequent; our other interest was cine songs. Girls in all households were equally interested in listening to cine-songs but would elegantly pretend to be uninterested and some would put on looks of being ‘disinterested’. Somehow, if we managed to tap Radio Ceylon-- the Mecca for cine-song lovers, those uninterested and disinterested characters would take positions of proximity to ‘hear’ songs. A lot of policing had to be done to venture into cricket commentary or for song listening. We were mortally afraid of being caught by the elderly men who may return home –spoiling the small time entertainment we managed to snatch on occasions. By turns, the boys would peep out into the street to see if the ‘house boss’ is sighted anywhere in the vicinity. Should such an exigency arise a loud call would alert us and the taller of us would ‘switch the radio off’ and quickly restore the pointer to its traditional positions. Being a thing done in haste, the pointer may be detected for deviation and questioning for indulgence would begin in right earnest. Putting on the best of innocent looks, every boy would disown any knowledge of radio listening.  But, these tricks would fail because in our urgency, we would have failed to restore the setting to Medium wave from our interest on Short wave. To create opportunity to radio listening, once in three weeks, each boy would plead for hair cut sighting that he gets head ache; the honest purpose was to read cine magazines / listen to movie songs which were regularly available in hair dressing saloons. The whole thing may look ridiculous now but that was our way of ingenious planning to achieve that small thing –listening to something of interest to us.

Prof. K. Raman