Did you see the tape recorder leaving?
I didn’t.
Last week, I saw a poster of a seemingly interesting radio show and wanted to catch it live. Then it felt to me like I had not heard the radio actively, in ages. I scrolled through the list of apps on my phone in vain a few times. I looked at my Paati’s old chest of drawers over which I expected to see the ghost of an old 2-in-1 tape recorder and saw no sign of it nor have a memory of it ever being given away. The last few years that I have heard the radio, I have always been in a car, and that too, one that does not allow you to Bluetooth music of your choice off your phone.That is when it hit me that the tape recorder and the radio as they came to be, were figuratively, gone.
What were we doing when the radio left our phones and entertainment unit tops? My guess is that we were online, just where we are these days, when things come and go, provided the WiFi goes on.
I think hard and try to remember what used to be between the radio and me, as M. S.’s voice settling into ‘Bhaja Govindam’ fills my head and I see 13-year-old me pouring over school homework, trying to resist the Yamuna Kalyani interfering with the algebraic rules on my mind. My Paati is at her arm chair across the hall, singing along as she solves the week’s Dinamalar Varamalar crossword. My Paati, the radio and I were a threesome that me and my memories of our trysts together, are the only remnants of.
As I think about my first interface with the tape recorder as a toddler, my mind goes back to a mealtime war between Amma, spoonfuls of kanji, and my tightly pursed unrelenting lips, the defeated kanji embellishing my super hero suit — clean white baby chemise with the tiny red flower on the neckline. What the radio had to offer as background score to the unfolding drama, is Fun Time Nursery Rhymes with Preeti Sagar and kids, who when I was a little older, I thought of as a closer-to-home version of Maria and the VonTrapp kids from the ‘The Sound of Music’.
Another association I have with the tape recorder, is that on it, is the only place I have heard my Thatha’s voice. In an old cassette box with the initials ‘TAR’ after, T. A. Ranganathan, the recording on the cassette was of him speaking with his sick mother, with a spirit uncanny of the situation, joking about how he had no hopes that his frivolous son, now my Appa, would take care of him as well as he had taken care of her. My Thatha to me is that voice, of a pragmatic witty man, doting son and amiable father, who unyieldingly lived more hardships than dwelt on.
I would often help my Paati set the radio up on a stool, over a few books, in the right height and angle in front of the TV to record shows she wanted to keep for later. We recorded indiscriminately, sometimes even overwriting old ones that we were done listening to . Kalai Thendral, Ellame Sangeetham, and Margazhi Concerts — there was just always some audio-only rerun of music and infotainment shows on the 2-in-1 at home.
Today, our choice to shift to streaming platforms that make entertainment accessible to our convenience, eliminating advertisements and allowing us to pause, resume, and re-watch with barely any effort, makes me feel like we are a generation that doesn’t deserve its entertainment, and will soon, send the television packing too.
There were a few recordings that Paati would share the same trivia about every time they played. Some that I clearly remember of the many are a speech by Sri. Rajaji during the the launch of the ‘Hindustan Akash Vani’ (AIR) in Madras in the late ‘30s, the rendition of ‘Maitreem Bajatha’ by Smt. M. S. Subbulakshmi at her concert for the UN, a recorded DD Podhigai talk show with Smt. Kamala Sadagopan, ace novelist and a dear cousin of my Paati’s, and a recorded news channel interview of my uncle, Ramani Athimber, discussing his social work in Triplicane. Now that I can judge for myself how meaningful these events, the people, their work and it being featured on the radio are, I understand why these were so significant for her to keep, back then.
The first few cassettes that were exclusively mine, however, were those that I recorded during the formative years of my Paatu and Veena classes to help with practise at home. Even though Amma bought me my own Walkman to take to class, I would always insist on playing the cassettes in the bigger 2-in-1, on its table in the hall, when I practised. My Paati was my personal Alexa, pausing, playing and rewinding to my whims as I sang or played along. When I was old enough and learnt that the technology behind a cassette was a tape and two gears, I would use a pencil to work the tape, and end up leaving it in knots. Paati would sit down to set it right as I settled into bed only to wake up the next morning to my cassette ready as ever, for practice that evening.
Another trivia that ties me with the radio was that Raji Paati, my dads best friend, Balaji Mama’s mother, another Paati figure I shared with Pavi and Prarthu, Balaji Mama’s daughters, had been a carnatic vocalist, at the Madras All India Radio. Memories of playing with Pavi and Prarthu at their house, to the background music of Raji Paati humming to herself through the day are as vivid as can get. I once had her teach me ‘Sarasa Sama Dhana’, a Tyagaraja Kriti in two days, for a music competition. In her early ‘80s, she worked so hard to make me learn the Telugu words of the song, their meanings and nuances like she would while performing herself, without treating me like a 9-year-old learning for the sake of a competition. I think of her and her shaky-from-age voice that never gave in and kept singing till the end, whenever I sing or hear, ‘Sarasa Sama Dhana’ anytime after.
As I recollect these events in my head, it upsets me that I don’t even know what brand and model the tape recorder we owned was, or what had happened to it. I remember it was silver and black and had a brand’s name in the front — Panasonic, if I remember right. Knowing my grandmother, she did not throw it. She must have given it away to someone else, one of the many times the rest of us at home insisted she decluttered the old things she owned mindless then, of how meaningful of some of those were.
Today, the radio is like the moon — accompanying us on car drives, only to get shut out when are back indoors. It is also not long before the internet infiltrates in-car entertainment. What was an indispensable discovery to generations of people before us, bringing to tea shops and the common man’s house, information of national importance during the freedom struggle, deaths of national leaders, international cricket matches and even entertainment that put India on the world map, with an ease and access they could have then only dreamt of, will become history in all sense. This is just me trying to rewind, pause and record my times with the radio and tape recorder, before we can move forward and overwrite. It is just the only way to work our past and future when part of a race that is constantly evolving.
P. S.: I did not listen to the radio show that prompted my thoughts because taking a car ride in the COVID lock-down to do so, seemed like too much effort when I could just wait for someone to post a recorded version of it to YouTube.
I know.
