From across the seas, via shortwave

Today’s living room is a veritable gizmo gallery with LED TVs, home theatres and BlueRay players fighting for space and attention. It’s a far cry from the days when households huddled around an old shortwave radio, with a cobweb kind of mesh running across the room serving as the aerial. Tuning into the station was a delicate art and as one groped for the right frequency, the radio protested all along, making funny noises. And one had to keep the ear tuned constantly to the set for there was never saying when the request would be played, unlike today, where you can quench your thirst for music by turning your iPod on and off like a water tap.
Like the TV addicts who surf channels with remotes today, avid shortwave radio enthusiasts knew every frequency on every band and had the programme guides memorised. As the day progressed, more stations came on air, and as the frequency got congested, the expert would deftly switch the band and turn to a new frequency and resume his listening.
The crackling Murphy or Westinghouse was a constant in the rooms with only the listeners changing, except when there is clash of programmes as the sister wants her weekly British Top Twenty while the brother refuses to change the tuner from BBC’s Test Match Special.
For the listener, there were other obstacles too like the poor reception, where the singer’s faint voice on Australia’s National Top Hits gave him the sense of distance between Melbourne and Bangalore. Add to this the cold war games of the erstwhile USSR, which made it a point to jam your favourite programmes with its Radio Moscow World Service which tried its best to counter the BBC and VOA’s version of the news.
Pop music shows on the BBC, Radio Australia, VOA, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation and Radio Kuwait were popular among Bangalore’s youngsters, who frequently sent in song requests and took part in contests, winning tee shirts, programme guides and other prizes in the bargain. Saddam Hussein not only robbed Bangaloreans of their favourite programmes with his invasion of Kuwait but the first Gulf War that followed saw the advent of 24-hour cable TV, which hastened the demise of shortwave radio.
All India Radio Bangalore had its own request show on medium wave called Your Choice on Sunday afternoons, which more often than not was her (announcer’s) choice, since the studio collection seemed to be limited to just a few LPs. And as she read out the names of the listeners who made the request, there was a cheer from the small crowd around the radio, only to be replaced by disappointment for the broken record would refuse to proceed beyond the second stanza, which goes on and on till the announcer has enough of it and turns to the next request.
With modern radios coming with just the AM and FM modes, the shortwave radio, surely seems to have sung its swan song.

From grease to glitz

Before Bangalore acquired its infotech sheen, it was a thriving nuts and bolts town not so long ago. Its industrial scene was dominated by big public sector industries and several manufacturing firms. With the terms ‘BPO’ and ‘software’ yet to be coined, the city’s youngsters, watching these factory buses pick up and drop their employees, aspired to join the workforce of these big engineering firms. Most companies boasted their own buses with their unique liveries, and at the beginning and the end of shifts, these vehicles outnumbered the red and silver BTS buses on Bangalore’s roads. And the executives who brought their own Lambrettas, Vespas or Jawas to work, were the envy of their colleagues.
And with the outskirts just a short walk away from the city centre, for some, factories were only a quick bicycle ride from home. A ‘shining’ example is today’s glitzy Koramangala, which was once ‘way out’ but is now considered a ‘far out’ hangout by youngsters. The postal address may still read ‘Industrial Area, Koramangala’, but the dominant edifices today here are shimmering  glass and chrome malls, IT firms, restaurants and corporate offices.
The flexi time that techies choose at work today, seem far removed from the fixed shifts of the manufacturing days. As the sirens went off, one set of workers trooped out with cotton waste sticking out of their greased pockets while another batch trickled in for the next shift.
The engineering era also spawned Bangalore’s own breed of dabbawallas who used to collect tiffin carriers in rexine or cloth bags hung on bicycles. The  housewife left a bag containing a three-tier stainless steel lunch carrier at the doorstep for the dabbawalla to pick up in the morning. After several ‘pick-ups’ along the way, he’d huff and puff away to the factories. Later in the afternoon, the bag would return to the doorstep to the accompaniment of the cry Carrier! from the dabbawallah, with the contents polished off by her husband at the factory.
Today’s infotech firms that pamper their employees with ‘abnormal’ pay and perks in an effort to tackle the problem of staff turnover, must be wondering how those old assembly line giants retained their workforce. It would be a matter of pride for a factory employee to flaunt the wrist watch that he ‘earned’ for completing 10 years of service at his factory. Something unthinkable today, for if the employee doesn’t hop the job for a more lucrative one, his company would retrench him in a downsizing exercise.
And in contrast to the five and even six-figure salaries today, families celebrating their factory-going bread winner’s annual hike of `200 was not uncommon.