All India Radio -2

When Keralam won the Santhosh trophy for the first time, the entire state burst into celebrations. The government declared holiday to all the educational institutions on the following day. That was a huge achievement for the people of a state. Trivial while comparing with the international happenings, but in our humble lettile circle of football, that was a great feat. It was in 1973. The captain of the team was TKS Mani and he scored a hat trick in the final. Anyway, I was too young to remember all those sequences

The excitation and the nerve wracking tensions all through the final match was never brought to us by the televison channels. Where were all these televison channels? We missed the ultimate pleasure of watching a final that would have been compared to a World cup encounter. But still, the commentator of the All India Radio did no less than an excellant job. His discriptions of the game always gave us a feeling that we were watching the match right over there at the stadium. The beautiful language he used in simple terms was always made the running commentary so enjoyable. Running commentaries were however available only for the semi finals and final matches.

We only heard the world cup 1986. The magic of the God of Football was still elusive to our eyes. The televions sets were yet to make its appearance in our desolate village. That was, in a way helped us a lot. We the children had a lot of time to spend together. No one were worried about missing a Tom&Jerry episode or the live telecast of an India Pakistan test cricket match. Nobody took excuse in such television events to avoid playing in the open grounds. We had a lot of time and a lot of space to play

Radio gave us enough stuff to enjoy. Though the high voltage running commenteries were very rare, the "Katha Prasangams" were abundantly available on air and were equally entertaining as a football match. The story teller accompanied by simple musical instruments was a treat to our ears. Remember those clarinets and harmoniums? The simple tunes emenated from these instruments always soohted the souls of a community called Malayalees once upon a time. All India Radio regularly beamed "katha prasangams" on prime time slots. Prominent stories that always caught listeners interest were Aayisha, Shakespear Novels and many stories adopted from Ramayanam and Maha Bharatham.  V Sambasivan was one of the greatest "Kathikans" of those days. His mesmerising way of story telling had no parallels. The Akasavani always banked on his talent to entertain its listeners. 

 

Kathaprasangam was mainly a Temple dependent art form. Its survival mostly hinged on temple festivals. Not even a temple festival was complete without a Kathaprasangam. Kathikans always got a stage to presnet his story in its enchanting beauty the during a temple festivals. The combination of Clarinet, harmonium and Tabala had the capacity to set the stage on fire hands down. An artist with the gift of the gab could easily take his audiance to a fantastic world escorted by sweet music. That was the beauty of Kathaprasangam. People were willing to walk kilometers together to reach temples to have a few hours of blissful, soul soothing pure entertainment.

Interested to listen V Sambasivan's Aayisha? Click the link if you are in a mood to enjoy a Kathaprasangam : http://www.devaragam.com/vbscript/WimpyPlayer_ext.aspx?ord=d&var=5066,5067,5068,5069,5070,5071,5065

"Ini njan Urangatte" was one of the most popular Kathaprasangams those days. The story was adopted from a novel with the same title authored by P K Balakrishnan. The story is all about the happenings in Mahabharatham. Cherthala Balachandran did a commendable job in rendering a beautiful story in the form of a Kathaprasangam. He introduces first : The story that I am going to tell you all is "Ini Njan Urangatte..." the thundering of the title is follwed by deafening noice of cymbals and other musical instruments.

He once came to our village temple too. As he thundered the name of his story on stage, Meenakshiyamma fell on the ground. She had already started dozing off since the programme started very late in the night. This was a regular practice by artists and their troupes to reach late at the venue and come to the stage only after testing the patience of the predominantly rural audiances. While sitting on the sandy ground in front of the temple to watch the Kathaprasangam, Meenakshiyamma could not control her sleep. Her fall and the announcement of the name Ini Njan Urangatte happend simultaneously. Even now, this octogenarian, amidst a heartfull laughter, recollects that incident. For people like a rustic old lady,such little incidents only make them ticking. They coould find immense pleasure in such seemingly silly incidents.

Great kathaprasangams like Aayisha and Othallo were part and parcel of the radio entertainments. They never disappointed. In a way, the role played by All India Radio in shapping up our charecters was so big. It showed more social responsibilty too. Programmes like kandathum kettathum, ranjini, ezhuthupetti, narma prabhashanam and drama were all received by the public with both hands, to be more precise, with both the ears. The week long Radio Drama Festival once in a year brought the best from the cultural spectrum of those days. There was a Cinema Sound Track festival too for a week in an year

Our elder brothers had a Radio Listeners club. They used to listen the programmes and send their opinions to the Akasavani. When the letter is read along with the names of the persons in the Ezhuthupetti section, everyone's face used to bloom like lotus. AIR's broadcasts on Agricultural based programmes were very helpful and informative. It helped my eldest brother get an opportunity to go around India at the cost of the government.This weekly sequel had a few questions to answer. Those who participated in all the sequels and answered the questions were selcted for an all India tour by the Akashvani.

Such great things were happening in the villages too. Where has the Akashavani gone? It will be more apt if I asked where has the radio gone? Will we ever hear those words "Akashavani, pradesika varthakal, vayikkunnathu Ramachandran" again? Pradesika varthakal was so beautiful because of the reader called Ramachandran. Of course, with the dawn of FM era, the lovable transistor radio got a re-birth. But, the FM radio was virtually hijacked by the film based programmes and all is sunk in the overdose of advertisements. The beauty of radio listening is further hampered by the Manglish speaking jokeys. No escape. Just layback and enjoy the new era's radio broadcasting trends. But, let us behold the good old Akashavani's memories....