In 2013, the house I was born in, was pulled down brick by brick. The attic of the house that throughout my childhood, I believed was abode of Paasekdar; supernatural being with angelic face that guarded our house against evil spirits was emptied like a garbage dump. Most poignant scene was watching my wonderland- the attic of the house being ruthlessly dismantle with massive mallet. It was like watching snatching childhood from me. The mace with crystal head had gone missing, moth eaten small booklets on music and antique gramophone and broken records of my father were removed by the contractor to be sold as junk in city’s junk market. The market, for it having come after reclaiming out of pristine fresh water lagoons telling story of our apathy towards water bodies. Seeing once, most precious possession of the house, the Marconi Radio set put in the waiting tumbrel like a just guillotined revolutionary was like watching on celluloid Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard.
Looking back, the radio sets of late forties and fifties were rebels incarnate. These too were, silenced, imprisoned, dragged and roped to the party offices of the National Conference and penalized by breaking these to pieces. Ironically, the National Conference that had struggled for freedom of tahreer aur taqreer (Press and platform) after joining Maharaja Hari Sin Sardar Patel not only denied freedom of expression but even freedom of listening programs from a radio station of one’s choice.
I do not exactly who owned first radio set in our Mohalla Nevertheless, there was a story that a government functionary owned a radio set during Second World War. The family after dusk, kept the radio set at a table in their balcony enabling people gathered in their compound to listen news about war from different radio station across the globe. It was after 1947, a few more families owned radio sets in our Mohalla. Those were the times, when in most of the houses radio’s remained tuned in to shortwave 60.3- Radio Tradkhal. Most of the children remembered signature tunes of various programmes broadcast from this station. No child dared to change the band wave of Azad Kashmir Radio. Convincing elders for tuning in to Radio Kashmir at 9.30 was as good winning battle of Waterloo.
At 9.30, Radio Kashmir broadcast dramas in Kashmiri and Urdu languages. Most of the dramas were written by best of the playwrights of their times. Some of the dramas broadcast from Radio Kashmir without reservations could be called classical for their plot, language, content and presentation. True, our Urdu dramas could not be compared to the Urdu dramas broadcast from Radio Pakistan scripted by eminent like Ashfaq Ahmed, Bano Quadsia, Razia Bhat and others but in their own right those were a class. I and my sibling with elders glued to Machama our ears radio. Some one-liners like Baba-Douth-Matric, perhaps from a drama written by Sattar Shahid got intricately woven in our lingua franca. The drama serial written by Som Nath Sadhu and Pushkar Bhan, though written in pedestrian language was very popular with general radio audience. Notwithstanding, nicknames over centuries having got enmeshed in our colloquial language, somehow I did not like the idiom used in this radio-drama and largely demeaning the names of Muslim characters in the drama. Instead bolstering our vocabulary with mellifluous and refined words the drama serial added obnoxiously bad words to our lingua franca. I remember riffraff cat-calling at two young girls in our locality as Singeree and Zingaree… after the names of two witch-like characters in the radio drama.
The Veth Roz Pakan, a series of radio dramas written by three important playwrights Akhtar Mohudin, Ali Muhammad Lone and Somnath Zutshi, broadcast from Radio Kashmir still live in my memory. This series of dramas broadcast from Radio Kashmir had not only taken me on trek into the past, but also encouraged me to react and respond. In a three page letter, I convey my impressions about this series of dramas to radio Kashmir in Urdu.
After posting the letter, I eagerly waited for the day when program about letters and feed backs was broadcast. My letter surprisingly was read in its entirety and broadcaster also responded to some of my observation. Feeling elated, on this day I was convinced that I could write about radio programs and critique them.
Z.G.Muhammad is a noted writer and columnist
