In my childhood, I used to listen radio.
it was such a wonderful world of melodious songs, poems, discussions and that boring news which was difficult to understand at that age. I glued to our old fashioned, big radio kept in a wooden box with holes to help sound come out of it. I recall somebody also told me that artists and singers and those children of Baal-Mandali all live in that radio. So whenever Bhaiya used to open that radio for repairing I used to wonder where they all had gone! Anyway, enjoyed that age-old radio for quite some years.
When I was 15 yrs old a tape recorder was bought in my home. After listening it in other people’s houses for some years I used to think that our boring radio gives us surprises in the form of songs. This tape-recorder is better than radio because I could know well in advance which song is going to play. In newly-bought tape-recorder I used to record voices of family members and myself and enjoyed that too quite a lot, especially putting that old radio in back on rack. I still remember some of the songs word by word I used to memorize by using ‘pause’ button, writing and rehearsing them. First such cassette was “Thanda Thanda Paani from Baba Sehgal. It was a Hindi Rap. Gradually time went by. Cassettes were changed and exchanged with friends and neighbors too. Slowly a feeling of boringness started creeping in me.
I had left listening radios. Tape recorder was monotonous. It was “predictable”.
Then, I learnt the importance of surprises in life. Living moment by moment adds interest to life. YES, Radio bounced back in my life. I started listening a new radio which was very tiny compared to older one. It had short wave catching capability. Now I had the privilege of listening to unpredictable. Though, initially, I thought too much of unpredictability would make me feel that I’m not free. I felt I could not ‘decide’ what I wanted to hear. But gradually I learnt the art of living in unpredictable world of radio. Channels would keep broadcasting what they are programmed for. If I do not like it it is me who needs to change the channel….. and this ended my dilemma of freedom.
YES, in life too all of us are free. World is not going to change for us. All sort of things were there much before we came on earth and they will remain here after we are gone. So it is our task to choose, to pick and not world’s task to give us what we like. Everything is on display. Pick and use. Simple.
Then came the world of the idiot box. The Television. I repeated the same cycle, though for shorter period, that I did with radio. I saw whatever programmes were being aired (no choice). Got bored.Then I saw movies by choice by picking CDs & DVDs. Got bored again by predictability. Stories were almost same. Be it cinema or serials. Now these days I’ve been enjoying Reality show named “Big Boss”. It is unpredictable. You can’t guess who’ll say what in next episode. Even the characters of the show don’t know what they’ll do with whom and what they will going to say next moment… and this mysticism generates curiosity. Same like our life.
Isn’t it full of wonder that we see the same thing everywhere? be it Radio or TV or People… because they are all made out of life.
