Days that never get back…..

Hearing music while doing work is my habit!!(Yeah I would probably call it as my working styleJ). Nowadays earphones are indispensable thing for me like air or water etc: P ... I used to listen the online radios and of course some music sites too.  Today I have got a mail from my childhood friend (Ram) telling me that he had send a letter to a famous FM and asked me to go through the recorded version. While hearing the RJs reading out that letter, my mind flew away to child hood days. I still remember a little girl who is very anxiously and playfully tuned the stations only to hear different sounds! And sometimes wondering who was speaking inside that box!  I don’t know where that huge radio, that taught me to sing and make me dreamt went away. My dad had given to somebody else to repair and it had gone to somewhere with lots of memories!!!

In my childhood days, radio was the star. I can still call back how eagerly my grand mom was waiting for the news and how anxiously we children, waiting for the “sabhdharekha” in Sundays! That was the only way of entertainment in those days. Now I wonder how well we could recognize the actors, fights etc only from sounds! And undoubtedly it paves the way for imagination. Now also I can remember “aakshavani.. samprithi vartha ha shuyanatham. Pravachakaha Varadevandha Sagaraha” the only Sanskrit I know even now.:)

My grand mom was really addicted to the radio in those days. In fact her routine is tuned to the radio, I feel. She used to keep her black radio with antenna on the dining table in kitchen.  I sometimes feel irritated the sounds of radio in mornings, coz I wanted to sleep more, but she would not allow me to sleep saying that girls should wake up at least at 6 o’clock. {(That was the main reason I did not like to stay with her and yeah she used to insist that I should always be in and around her; did not allow me to go out and play with others and I hate that too coz I had all the freedom to do whatever I want in my home. But now I know all those were come out of love only.  It is a late realization... Coz she is not with us now…to love me, to teach me the old songs, to scold me and at last to irritate me with her love...) I know I start with radio and ends with something else... I don’t know why my thought goes widely sometimes.} .

She used to put the radio on sharp at 6.00 am. I used to hear all the programs while lying on bed. I can recall those programs even now. It goes like this- 06.00:  subhashitham 06:05: English news 06:10 Bhakthi ganangal 06:35 karshika varthakal 06:40 advtmnt 06:45 Pradeshika varthakal 06:55 Sanskrit news. When the news in Sanskrit began, ie at 6.50 am, the radio got silent and I knew itz time for breakfast. And the way she ate breakfast also in a special way. She used to eat in the dried leaf of plantain. The smell of onion chutney that kept in the uri and the dosai in the plantain leaf!! I can feel that smell now and it makes water in mouth

.

Even after we bought TV, she likes her radio very much and prefers that only. She relies more on radio and I saw her rarely watching TV. She used to carry the radio with her even she comes to our home too. Now I feel that may be that is the only companion she had in that huge house, (she always prefers to live alone) to make her entertained, to make her believe that she was not alone. May because of that she was attached to it like anyone.

Now I had that radio with our home, I do not know where it kept … may be in the almirah where we used to keep the old books and all. But still it is working J anyway after hearing that letter, I have decided, this time when I go home, I  am gonna take that radio with me to here in  Chennai, with lots of memories.

Yes! This letter reminds me the days that I spent with her. I don’t know where all those people vanished- the dhobi women who usually washes the white and heavy cloths, a Pandaram who used to come with a sound similar to crying, in the noon…!, the bangle seller “chinnamma”, who comes in the first Sunday of almost every month with a heavy baggage on her head..  Now I can’t run my hands over the jasmine shrub that dotted bael tree too. It also has disappeared with time! {But I am here!! (The little girl inside me, who is not grown up at all,) is searching for something in these memories!! } All those have become memories only. Yes that is what Time will leave in the autograph of our life! That is what left for us at the end of the day to cry, to dream and to live too!!

Somebody is singing inside the radio …”kaiyethum doore oru kuttikalam……. Mazhavellam pole oru kuttikalam..”