Relive the timeless stories of All India Radio in this book

Radio made cricket a religion in Indiardquo says veteran football commentator Novy Kapadia and everyone seems to agree The game introduced to us by the English was once played by royals like Ranji Jam Saheb of Nawanagar VizzyMaharajkumar of Vizianagaram the two Nawabs of Pataudi and Maharaja of Dungarpur amongst others It became a household name only due to AIREveryone we spoke to for this book whether commentators or fans mentioned the golden era in the rsquo70s when transistors shrunk in size people could carry them around and people walking on the road with hands holding transistors glued to their ears became a common sight Many fondly recalled how they smuggled tiny transistor sets into classrooms and officesThere was a time when one could walk through markets and hear commentary playing in every shop Pulokesh Mukhopadhyay a veteran sports journalist and sports editor of The Statesman remembers the streets of Kolkata he walked as a young man where the commentary blared forth from every handcart on the road with cheers going up in unison in the entire market when a run or a goal was scored ldquoWhen AIR covered the IFA shield football matches the entire city of Kolkata would come to a standstill as fans sat glued to their transistor sets listening to the commentaryrdquo he saysA taxi driver in Mumbai listens to the radio broadcast of the longawaited revival cricket match between India and Pakistan on March 13 2004 PicGetty ImagesVeteran Hindi commentator Sushil Doshi recollects a tea stall owner in Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi telling him that sales always went up three times when matches were on as people stopped to listen while sipping hot tea ldquoKya score hua What is the scorerdquo was the most common question one heard on the streetsbull bull bullBut the commentary in English was understood and followed only by a handful It had not yet reached villages and the streets and lanes of each town nor acquired cult statusHindi would be needed to make this happenIn 1960 the Government of India decided that all important sports events would also be covered by Hindi commentary Due to a plethora of greats dominating the live commentary in English many wanting to enter the field were ignoredOne such was 23yearold Ravi Chaturvedi a zoology lecturer at Delhi University who couldnrsquot get a chance as an English commentator So he grabbed the opportunity and did the first Hindi commentary for a Ranji trophy semifinal between Delhi and MumbaildquoI still remember the datemdashFebruary 24 1961 Mumbai won by an inning and 203 runsrdquo he tells us ldquoThis was however broadcast only locally It was the first Test match with Hindi commentary when India led by the Nawab of Pataudi Jr drew against the English team led by Ted Dexter which brought a change in Indian sports across the countryrdquoThe match played on December 1 1961 in Kanpur however brought about a revolution With a single masterstroke the Hindi commentary cricket entered millions of Indian homes in villages and cities The sport was never the same again India had discovered a new religionChaturvedi went on to play the lionrsquos share in popularising Hindi commentary and cricket in India and has to date written 27 books on cricket and cricket commentary He is the only commentator to have completed a doctoral thesis on cricket and was also awarded a Padma Shri the fourth highest civilian award by the Indian government in 2012 He is also a freelance journalist and writes regularly on environmental and developmental issues The residents of his ancestral village Dalipnagar near Kanpur recollect his stellar contribution to getting electricity to the village a road connected to the highway and the desilting of canals to provide irrigation water to the farmersChaturvedi recalls how Shiv Sagar Mishra the soninlaw of Hindi poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar asked him to speak pure HindildquoYou have to find words for all field positionsrdquo Mishra then a station director in AIR had insisted Joga Rao who later became a sportscaster challenged Mishra to tell him the Hindi equivalent of the field position ldquosliprdquo It soon dawned on them that the word ldquoparchirdquo or a slip of paper would sound ridiculous and they didnrsquot know how to proceed Finally Chaturvedi stepped in and gave his views as a zoology lecturer ldquoIn science conferences worldwide it is common to stick to the original Latin German or English words as the case may be We cannot translate square leg and short leg positions to lsquochaukon taangrsquo and lsquochoti taangrsquo can werdquoThe argument settled the matter and a truce was declared accepting the original names of field positionsExtracted with permission from Akashvani A Century of Stories from All India Radio by Vikrant Pande and Neelesh Kulkarni published by HarperCollins Publishers IndiaSome more tales from AkashvaniFuneral for harmoniumsldquoRam naam satya hai Prabhu ka naam satya hairdquo chanted the veteran broadcaster actor and poet Harindranath Chattopadhyay The group of musicians he led reverentially laid down the boxes they carried onto eleven biers arranged systematically on the grounds of the Lahore station of AIRHe carried an earthen vessel hung from hemp rope and containing burning coals and led the radio station musiciansrsquo procession to the nearest graveyard The words chanted by mourners at all Hindu funeral processions echoed across the roads of Shahpura as the group of mourners lamented the passing on of a dear friendThey laid the boxes neatly in the graves shovelled earth on to them and returned tearyeyed to their homes In the boxes were 11 harmoniums which were the property of the radio station They were so integral to musical programmes that when their use was banned on March 1 1940 AIR labelled it an ldquoinferior Western instrumentrdquo it was as if a relative had exited their livesmdashhence the mourningUrdu fans in PakObaid Niazi a retired AIR producer who also handled the Urdu service for some time recalls what Ghulam Ali the noted Pakistani ghazal singer had once told him He said he would make his disciples listen to the AIR Urdu service to understand how to speak Urdu correctlymdashsuch was its credibility and popularityAt its peak in the rsquo80s it received almost four lakh letters of appreciation every year of which nearly 50000 were from PakistanThis is Ruskin Bond callingHow does one record a story in a total lockdown How does one promote such an event The innate creativity of the broadcasters and the capacity for jugaad the ability to find innovative frugal solutions came to the fore to solve this problem Author Ruskin Bond would call on the landline every day and read a story while veteran broadcaster Basudha Banerji recorded itldquoYou will be surprised to hear about my recording studiorsquos locationrdquo she chucklesldquoI recorded wherever I could sometimes in the kitchen or in the bedroom with sheets hung on walls to muffle out echoes I also enforced a strict curfew in the house to keep outside sounds away We recorded promos in the oddest of places Manoj Atri veteran AIR producer recorded some in a studio created inside a mosquito netrdquo