When the rain finally went away and the golden sun descended from the heavens upon the paddy fields and blessed everyone with a good harvest, he sat down and took stock of the situation in hand. He was generally satisfied with life. His town, Valia Kunnu was a prosperous little town now; this year promises to be plentiful after a good harvest, and he had in Lalita a devoted yet opinionated wife. It was true that they don’t have children, but they were still young and if Bhagothi wills it, there was still time. He is so lucky. Whatever little they have, Lalita was happy with it and never showed her unhappiness, if she ever felt it, to anyone around her. They bore the indignities and inconveniences in life with dignity and patience.
In a town like this, the only important thing was local politics if you didn’t want to dabble in the affairs of the religion. Politics and religion, but there was little to choose from the two and come to think of it, there wasn’t much difference between them. Even though he never went past the tenth grade, his teachers had always said he had a technically inclined mind. He fancied himself as an inventor, a builder of things, a talented mechanic who was yet to be discovered. It was this preoccupation that led him to the newspaper advertisement he had glanced at the local paper about building a radio. In Valia Kunnu, Bhagothi had a great reputation of leading her devotees to their true quests in creative and unassuming ways. The advertisement promised all the knowledge necessary to build one by yourself, in ten days or less.
Radio was a luxury for the city-rich. They, like everything else in their world, depended on mechanical devices to bring them songs and news from around the world. People were going to quickly-built institutes to learn how to repair them even though there were not enough of radios yet. But it was the next wave, his friend Alex would tell him, as he finished a course in radio repairing, you just watch. Until now, he had not paid much attention to this. But now, it all started to make sense. It was not as if he didn’t know anything about building things. He had built a cowshed all by himself, and as a child he and his friends built a motor with coils and salvaged parts. Radio may be the most complicated yet, but he had Alex for support.
The temple festival was looming over the whole village. He decided that if he had to build it, he better start now. He walked all the way to the village town hall that passes for the library and asked if they had books on radios. They laughed; it is not every day that someone showed up asking for books. Then they wondered why a sane person like him would want to read a book like that; what was he going to do with a radio! Alex had many books, he said, but they were in English. Undaunted, he went about looking for it and the word reached a radio repair teacher at Kottayam and his secondhand radio book.
Essentials of Radio Repair and Maintenance, it read, by Jacobi and Lentz translated to Malayalam by P. J. M. Panikkar M. Sc.
He read it line-by-line, memorizing new words-- vacuum tube, soldering iron, circuit, diode... They sounded funny, but he was not about to give up. He was going to build a radio.
He sent for the radio kit and after what seemed like eternity, it arrived in a light blue cardboard box with a picture of radio outside and English lettering on all sides. He read all the instructions in the kit and looked at each piece with great admiration.
There was only one glitch. Some things matched the pictures, some didn’t, and some were missing altogether! This was trouble, he said. Disappointing, agreed Alex.
He persisted, and with Alex, slowly accumulated missing tubes of funny shapes, a plywood piece that would be the bottom, many other bots and pieces from here and there, and finally, went to Kottayam with Alex to look at big shops for things he couldn’t pick up from here and there.
It is not going to work, said Lalita, with great exasperation. She couldn’t understand what had suddenly gotten into her husband. It seemed like an odd thing for him to do, sitting there with electricthings trying to create fire and sparks. If it were something useful, she would support it wholeheartedly. Something useful!!
--Don’t you want to listen to music? He asked incredulously
--Why?
--It will expand your mind; entertain you. Bring a world outside Valia Kunnu closer to you.
--But I am happy here, with you, managing whatever little money we have, this simple life.
He couldn’t convince her. The more he withdrew into the books and the kit, the more Lalita feared for the gap between them. The radio began to become the other woman in their midst. Grandma was so moved by Lalitha’s mood enough to pray for better sense for him. For additional protection, she dragged Lalita to the temple to complain personally to Bhagothi, What a crazy idea, thevare (God), make the boy stop.
If it was Monday, grandma was at the temple, well, at all the local temples, in the early morning. She fasted on Mondays, and sometimes on other days too. She used all that time to ask Bhagothi and other gods to smack some sense into the boy.
But gods didn’t seem to mind.
For ten days and ten nights, he worked on the radio assembly. In reality, it took a lot longer than ten days. But the box said ten days or less and that is what he was going to believe. The soldering sometimes went as planned; but mostly not, and when not, he spent more time pulling and pushing at wires and electicthings, sometimes getting a bit of shock, sometimes cutting his finger tips. And then one day, Lalita heard a continuous noise coming from the other side of the house that sounded like a roar. Then some splutter. Then rumbling noises, and finally the radio came to life.
She had to take a peek.
It didn’t look like a radio, at least not like the one pictures on the box, what with welded wires, other electricthings and vacuum diodes fixed on a plywood piece. There were small lights and cute little green cylinders. A speaker sat separately on the table connected the plywood contraption by two long red wires.
She was annoyed.
--Take that away from this house, haven’t you had enough fun?
He pretended not to hear, he played with this and that, pulled at a wire and pushed at a knob and walked around the room with the antenna. Somewhere in between all the pulling and pushing, a song played hesitantly from the speaker.
News like this spreads very fast in Valia Kunnu. News spreads and becomes literature. Literature grows to an epic. The story becomes a memory and the hero becomes a god. This was news with epic potential and everybody came to see the marvel, to partake in the experience of being there so their grandchildren and their children could hear the story of the radioman from firsthand experience.
The crazy woman ambled in from the next house. Even Godman Mallikk Mathai came in his new incarnation as Swami Jagadanand. He brought with him Sayip John, the British Kathakali student. He hitched up his lungi quite unfashionably and looked in and smiled. In England, he said unassumingly, everyone had a radio.
Everyone!
Of course nobody believed him. Definitely not Comrade Achari from the panchayat . May be in Soviet Union, but not in the capitalistic, colonial England, he said dismissively, careful to remain outside the earshot of John. He may not be a fan of the colonialists, but he wanted to remain polite. The oppressing classes will never allow the oppressed to possess such devices like the radio; he used it as an occasion to remind all and sundry in his blessed gravely voice about the evils of capitalism. This is why the Soviet Union is such a superpower. Radio for everyone and everyone for communism!
Achari was disappointed that the radio, when it produced discernable sounds at all, sang phillum songs. He was quite enraged that there was no way to listen to Russian programs, which he described as wonderful and educational, even though he had never heard Russian. But there was no one else there that had heard Russian either, and he was a graduate of the Party Leadership training session at Alwaye. That is closer to Russia than anyone else here had been to, except perhaps for the sayip John, but he was a bourgeoisie. So Achari’s assessment stood the test of logic and time.
When all he could hear was the cackling and an occasional song, he withdrew saying he had important things to attend to at the panchayat.
Everybody understood. Births have to be recorded, deaths have to be noted, licenses had to be issued for commercial activity, cronies had to be accommodated and above all, meetings had to be held, resolutions passed.
Overall opinion was positive. Everyone agreed that this accomplishment finally ushered the technology age into the village. What is next? A theatre showing moving pictures?
But Lalita refused to be swayed by public opinion. She busied herself in the kitchen, blowing into the open pit with a brass tube to fan the flames. From the kitchen, the radio sounded to her like the crackling of the wood fire.
Then, suddenly, without any reason Lalita fell ill. One day she was walking around nice and strong, the next day she was down with the worst kind of back pain. She was scared. He was scared. Grandma was most scared, because it meant that she would have to carry on with the housework all alone. Vaidya was called, medicines were prescribed, modern medicine was criticized, ayurveda was praised and as usual, the weather was blamed.
All of this had to happen just as the festival at the Bhagothi temple started. Bhagothi’s attending aediles perambulated around the preparations with great urgency and burped satisfying aromas of bygone lunches. They walked around with receipt books and black bags and knocked at every door, and where there were no doors, they dropped their heads into the mud huts and reminded the hut dwellers of their grave responsibility to keep the temple dweller happy. Valia Kunnu came on its own with red and yellow banners, with festival lightings, the loud speakers were dusted out from Narayanan’s shed to add the necessary vocal oomph to the proceedings. The loud speakers belted out songs with a lot of explosions and whistles added along the way. The mike-tester came alive and made him a standing exhibit behind the newly installed mike and interrupted the melody with his own rendition.
--Hello, hello.. miketeshting miketeshting
Children gathered under the dais and watched the self-important mike-tester and his serious business. Much of the festival depends on his ability to test the mike, the ability to carry the sounds of the festival to those far and away.
But Godless Achari, who also doubled as the President of the festival, had no time for such truculent nonsense. He ruled over the committee just he imagined the central secretariat was managed by Comrade Stalin. He was sure the great comrade would sincerely appreciate his ways of running the temple committee. Bhagothi’s opinion he was not sure, but her status oscillated between the divine and the oppressive in his mind. Once the revolution comes, it will be Bhagothi for the people, by the people, bestowing plurabilities on all people.
Everyone was busy watching silly-goings on at the temple, and listening to the elephants talking to each other while exercising their eupeptic stomachs. He took a break from the monotony of the house and joined the villagers at the temple. Elephants spoke of him sardonically in a coded language that he couldn’t understand.
Everyone had to be at the temple. Young and old. Particularly the old. And the middle aged.
Except for Lalita.
She slept in feverish solitude after he left her in the morning. Grandma finished household chores to run off to the temple. Everyone was sad to leave her along in the house, but who wanted to upset Bhagothi by not being at the temple?
So the radio took over the caretaker role for the immobile patient. Lalita complained to the radio and radio sang back at her. She was lullabied into sleep by newly favorite singers crooning right next to her.
From my eye to yours,
I will build a bridge
On the bridge I will build a castle
And imprison you in it with my love
I will be your knight in shining armor
And the dragon that watches over you
At times, the radio was like an old person, through coughing and spluttering, it spoke of old histories, the health of the market, the price of banana plantains, announced birthdays of Pinky and Sonu of Begumpet or Suseela of Cochin. Then it even played a song in their honor.
Between faint, uncomfortable sleep and the songs, Lalita fell in love with the radio. Day after day she regained her strength from the radio and got better. She got up, took a few steps, walked longer, took a bath in water boiled with tamarind leaves, oiled her hair, returned to normal life. In weeks. Slowly. Just as the festival ended and Valia Kunnu went back to its normal ways. The festival committee went down from the lofty highs of power and became ordinary citizens. Bhagothi was alone once again, sitting in the dark silently bestowing plurabilities of the multitudes even as they focused on other things.
Grandma was the most pleased at Lalitha’s recovery. He was pleased too. Swami Jagadanand attributed it to Bhagothi and the power of the festival. Comrade Achari was convinced that she recovered so quickly because she was free from the exploitative forces from the past. He secretly swore it was the radio that cured her.
Everyone agreed it was a good thing.
In the afternoon, when the village slept a languid sleep, she sat up outside in the back porch and listened to the songs. In the evenings, when the farmers brought their cattle home from a day of ploughing and little children were instructed to pray, she sat by the radio transfixed listening to the news, all the strange happenings in far away places like Trivandrum and New Delhi. There was an outside world and in its vast spaces, ministers were being sworn in or dismissed, dacoits were being killed, accidents were investigated and markets were regulated. There was a world where news and myths made love to each other in intangible ways and came alive. Grocer Narayanan was overcharging for sugar, the collector sahib was supposed to come visit every three months instead of once a year and the canal maintenance was a right and not a favor bestowed on them by the MLA.
Trickle…trickle… trickle!
Each piece of information was like overcooked rice that sticks to the palette. Each news item brought with it, undried blood or unwiped tears. There was a world out there where women worked and didn’t serve their husbands and somewhere far away there was even a leader who was a woman. She led peoples of different nations, and all of them, men and women respected her, listened to her.
And she was a woman!
Lalita changed. She became a woman. Beyond a wife, a daughter-in-law, a subject of rules and codes, she blossomed into what was Bhagothi’s destiny for her. She became a witness. The radio at times looked like Bhagothi whispering secrets to her. There wasn’t the customary bath in the evenings, the rice stayed cold, the made stayed unmade. He came home to empty rooms and empty cookware. Lalitha was out reaching out to the other women.
He didn’t understand the change. The radio was like a lover in their midst, a paramour who hid behind the drapes when he arrived.
The whole village looked at him with great sympathy.
--I told you so, they said individually when they saw him, and such things are not for small places like ours. This is not Cochin or Trivandrum!
--Once you lose control of your life, she is gone.
--Poor boy! I am sure things will be back to normal soon. After all, Lalitha just recovered from her illness only recently, they said, even though they knew this was not going to be normal.
--All of this is prophesied in the Sastras , Kali kaal brings upon us such terrible maladies, agreed Swami Jagadanand.
He nodded in silent agreement because words escaped him. There was nothing that he could really say. He was the one who built the radio. He was the one with the revolutionary idea. Lalitha had cautioned him against it.
He hated the radio. He hated this new Lalita. He wanted his old world back, he wanted Lalitha to cook and clean and wear unsmudged bindis.
The next morning Lalitha woke up late. She realized that the house was silent, no songs, no sound of news, and no discussions. For once, she could hear the water falling from the canal into the wheel once again. She got up in panic and headed straight for the table where the radio was kept. The Radio was gone. There were no clues. No one saw anything; nobody heard anything.
It just vanished! Just like that!
He blamed the thieves that were roaming the countryside, the thick mustachioed nomads from Pandinadu who were pretending to be looking for work. Have you ever seen any of them work? But look at the way they eat!
--It must be the Pandis, Swami Jagadanand agreed.
--I swear that when the revolution comes, they will be hanging from the trees, joined in Comrade Achari.
--Now why would the Pandis want this radio? Wondered Grandma. But no one really paid attention to her. If Pandis can steal brass utensils, they can also steal a radio. Besides both Swami Jagadand and Comrade Achari agreed that this was the most probable cause. After all, this was kali kaal.
Lalitha knew this was not true. But there was no proof. Her heart ached, the pain grew to longing, longing became desire. Somewhere in the midst of all that, a great weight of loss settled in her. Like the memory of a dead child.
In the months following the harvest, long after the fields had turned gold and then brown, peace remained in Valia Kunnu. Children took to playing with old cycle wheels and adults stood around discussing how to appease the Gods. He took up reading the newspaper at the far-away town library. Lalita too returned to her unsmudged sindoor and cooking.
But now there was a wider gap between husband and wife, and the bridge between them, in disrepair, remained uncrossed.
Under a newly planted coconut sapling, the radio continued to sleep its blessed silent sleep. Only Bhagothi could smile a sad smile at the radio lying in the dark moist earth under the roots.
When nobody could see, Bhagothi hummed:
From my eye to yours,
I will build a bridge
On the bridge I will build a castle
And imprison you in it with my love
I will be your knight in shining armor
And the dragon that watches over you
