aaj ke naam...

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

from the waste land by t s eliot...

i guess if april could do all that (no matter how much mr.eliot finds it wasteful and cruel, april sure has a fertile creative energy), it must be the force of the month stirring roots with spring rain, that makes me start penning on the virtual (i am yet to become a blogger!).

that i am technologically challenged, is an understatement. also brought up on the old world charm of pen-paper letters, writing for a stranger virtual space, makes me slightly fidgety.

i like the sense of anonymity in a crowd of a zillion bloggers. like being at vt station at 630 pm.

let me put down some random thoughts about my newfound love - radio.

i grew up listening to akashwani regional news at 630 am, dozing and fussing over a coffee, and all-week-lasting morning school blues that disappeared as soon as i reached my chirpy class.

i remember dozing off at about 11 pm listening to 'bela ke phul', vaguely overhearing parents' conversations about how to manage a middle class life and mildly worrying about the usually half done homework.

never imagined that a portable radio could have any better application other than being carried around on an india-pakistan ODI.

until the blaring television started hurting my eyes and ears and insulting my intelligence day in and day out.

until i got so busy with work, kitchen, hangovers, limited spaces that it was only radio that could follow me around everywhere and keep me busy while i was busy. ever tried listening to radio while having a shower?

until i figured that people listen to it very carefully, people take it seriously, not just fisherfolk looking for high tide and rough sea warnings. it is a medium that speaks to you, it is a medium that is cheap (or let's say affordable), at production and consumer level, it is a medium that reaches many many more than i had imagined, whether it is the BBC on short wave or just good (bad, actually) old akashwani. you could be corporate busy, illiterate, inaccessible, poor, young, old, housewife, or anyone else, the radio still squeals for you without threatening to change you or alter your life!

until the sounds challenged me translate the fragrance of jasmine fused with first showers of rain into a sonic wave that says it.

so what about it? i've decided to give it a shot... to get that sound, to voice the real, to air the voices of the real, to generate a kind of wave that stirrs a few roots, to change the world may be?

can't promise success and achievement, but will keep trying...
someone once said, vaade aksar toot jate hain, koshish hi kaamyaab hoti hai...