My Grandfather’s Radio

That wretched radio. I just can’t believe I’m writing about it. It was the most irritating thing in this frigging world for me. Since the time I was 6 or 7, till my late teens, it remained an object of hatred. Even now, at 46, when I look back upon those days, it fills me up with this unavoidable rage that for the next thirty minutes or so I don’t speak to anyone straight faced.
My old lanky grandfather, used to carry it everywhere with him, may be even to the loo… I mean who knows, we never checked! That was literally a part of his body, a black colored object, with a rusted yet still silvery antenna on its head, which remained attached to his left hand all the time. In my childhood days I honestly believed he was working in the Air India Radio. Why else would you keep listening to it, even when it produced the most irritating of noises! I call it noise, because after a certain point of time it wasn’t sound anymore. And sometimes it was just playing, I noticed he wasn’t even listening, but the fact that it was playing is history!
My grandfather passed away when I was 21. I was studying my masters in a different city by then, I used to visit him once every two months. But his unexpected demise made me visit him earlier that time, within a month of my last visit. All throughout my way to his place, which I used to travel in a train that took exactly 4 hours for the coveted journey, I thought about how to face what I was going to witness. It was something certainly I had not expected to happen, and neither had I ever faced a death in my family before. The whole thing frankly was more awkward than sad to me. I was promising myself throughout the journey that I would behave like a grown up there, with maturity and without getting too sentimental about it. My grandfather was 84 when he died of a stroke. How more he would have lived, I thought. I felt it was better for people to expire after an age where they can’t take care of themselves. Or else they would just end up in extreme pain not just themselves, but also for people who cared about them. As my train entered the Howrah station, I was completely in control of myself, at ease with the ‘happening’. I was prepared to see a lot of family members crying, I had made myself strong enough not to get affected by all of it in these 4 hours.
The Gariahat market was hustling with activity, and people, specifically the housewives who had come to ‘spend’ their evening in the market. My rickshaw puller hand pulled the vehicle carefully through all this, trying not to hurt anyone. I reached my grandfather’s place within ten more minutes. There were around a dozen people just inside the entrance, talking among themselves. I recognized only three of them. I went in, decided not to enter the room where the ladies of the families were. I chose to sit in the room my grandfather used to sleep in. There hung a large picture of his, with flowers all round it. I sat on his bed and began looking at his room in an intrusive manner. Things were placed just at the places they always used to be. But there was something that did not suit the room. On a side table, which my grandfather usually used to keep his collection of books about Swami Vivekananda, there was that black radio besides these books. I picked it up and switched it on. There was no sound.


I broke into tears.

The little master

My ten year old son, Prateek, fondly called as ‘Puchu’ by me and my wife, surprised his mother this morning by waking up before time for school. For nearly 2 minutes, I and my wife felt elated as like other days we won’t have to deal with his normal morning tantrums. But then I realized sooner than later. Puchu ran towards the TV, switched it on and tuned into DD sports. He heard Charu Sharma speak as if he understood what he really meant. May be he understood, I almost can’t guess how much this next generation understands and knows. But much to his annoyance, his mother picked him up in her arms like a toddler and took him to the wash basin. Puchu turned his head repeatedly towards the television while brushing his teeth, almost oblivious to the fact that a lot of rinsed toothpaste was falling on the floor rather than on the basin.

It was a one day international between India and Sri Lanka, at the Mohali cricket ground. Thank god it wasn’t at the Ferozshah kotla in Delhi, or else Puchu might well have ran to the stadium itself after waking up, with his toothbrush hanging in his mouth. I mean literally. I never quite understood how a kid can be so insanely obsessed with Sachin Tendulkar. Anyway, I moved on towards my cupboard, it was time for my getting ready too. All this while when I was dressing up, I could hear my wife shouting at puchu, supposedly because my son was delaying his normal process of getting ready for school since he was too consumed watching the match. In fact, the match hadn’t even started. He almost jumped with victorious joy when he learnt that Ganguly had won the toss, and selected to bat first. My son jumped in a way Javed Miandad had jumped to retaliate against his dismissal appeal in ’92 world cup against Azharuddin’s India.

It was almost time for us to leave, puchu’s school bus would be there at the stand any moment. I’m sure he knew it better than me. I could almost see what he was planning in his little head. He wasn’t surely in a mood to ‘sacrifice’ the match by ‘visiting’ his wretched school today. I’m sure he had started hating his friends too for time being, they weren’t intelligent enough were they? They won’t be interested in the match as he was, surely that’s how he felt. How could he be even with them? Chheee!

His mother grabbed him again in a fashion similar to the earlier one, made him wear his well polished school shoes, and did all that with a very stern face indeed. Puchu started crying suddenly, and I wasn’t surprised. My wife besides being beautiful, could look the most dreadful when she would raise her eyebrows and look at someone with anguish with “I’ll slap you” kind of eyes. We were almost going to lock the door when my son, suddenly broke free from his mother’s lap, slammed the door open and ran towards the television. I was amazed at this sudden show of power from my undernourished son! Somewhere I felt quite proud. But anyway, now it was my job to bring him back outside. So I got in too, trying to grab puchu and tell him it’s ok to miss a match but not school. What we witnessed next on television was what actually made puchu go to school without any more retaliation. The scorecard said-

S R Tendulkar bowled by C.Vaas - 0

S Ganguly batting 5

R Dravid batting 2