Twilight of the evening is diffusing from the sky. Night is about to fall. People are returning from their backbreaking work at fields. Shutters of the shops were locked before sun could set. But still bazaar is alive by the thrilled voices coming from the corner of a bazaar where “game of cards “has reached its climax. Bulls and camels refresh themselves at pond refusing to take any more commands from their master.
This lethargic ambience breaks by the echo of a skilled voice coming from a near by house. A lively crowd of 200 people has gathered around a window of this house to hear evening news at 7pm of All India Radio. House belongs to no one but “bera”, the one and only Philips transistor owner. This is year 1970, place Farukhnagar. Before transistor the only source of entertainment available to locals was the religious “Swang”. It was the only occasion on which villagers got the chance to witness the religious epics and dance drama performed by local actors continuously for two or three nights. Female characters were mainly played by males. Soon repetitive performances of Swang were replaced by the variety of “Radio Stations” offered by Bera’s transistor. Bera earns his bread by making ‘moora’ but bought his toy of entertainment by selling rare seeds of ‘nut grass’ which he gathered through out the spring season. Nut grass is an expensive herb used in various medicines to cure many diseases. Transistor has turned bera into a celebrity overnight. But clever Bera never wanted to loose his moments of glory in the passing time. He wanted to leave something for the posterity like emperors do. And in order to achieve this he got himself clicked with the transistor.
This lethargic ambience breaks by the echo of a skilled voice coming from a near by house. A lively crowd of 200 people has gathered around a window of this house to hear evening news at 7pm of All India Radio. House belongs to no one but “bera”, the one and only Philips transistor owner. This is year 1970, place Farukhnagar. Before transistor the only source of entertainment available to locals was the religious “Swang”. It was the only occasion on which villagers got the chance to witness the religious epics and dance drama performed by local actors continuously for two or three nights. Female characters were mainly played by males. Soon repetitive performances of Swang were replaced by the variety of “Radio Stations” offered by Bera’s transistor. Bera earns his bread by making ‘moora’ but bought his toy of entertainment by selling rare seeds of ‘nut grass’ which he gathered through out the spring season. Nut grass is an expensive herb used in various medicines to cure many diseases. Transistor has turned bera into a celebrity overnight. But clever Bera never wanted to loose his moments of glory in the passing time. He wanted to leave something for the posterity like emperors do. And in order to achieve this he got himself clicked with the transistor.
4 comments:
Dear Sameena
Thank you for the incredible pictures. The photos of the men with the radio reminded me of a scene in the iconic Mother India, which begins with Nargis on the site of a dam which is being constructed. She is then called on to inaugurate the dam, and of course much has been written about the film as the celluloid version of Nehru's idea of dam being the temples of modern India, and 'if you must suffer, suffer for the sake of the nation etc'.
But what is interesting in the first five minutes of the film is towards the end of the song, when the politicians come to her house to persuade her to inaugurate the dam, her son Rajendra Kumar is seen twisting the nobs of a radio behind her. It is a very intriguing use of a ubiquitous object, the radio. It seemed to suggest to me ordinary objects came to mediate between the state driven monumentalist project of modernity one the one hand, the ordinary ways in which people located their experience of being modern in objects like the radio.
Wow! What a say. You have written very well Words and the tone to speak to them are the mirror of a human being, what is the appearance of the face, it often 'changes' with age and circumstances. Thanks for this post
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