Thaththa’s Wireless

Thaththa(my late father) was an avid radio listener. He called the radio a ‘wireless.’ Early in the morning, he listened to the news and, after dinner, to Sinhala and English songs. He allowed no one to talk aloud while he listened to the radio. Listening to the news and music was a struggle because of poor reception. He said the poor reception was because of the remoteness of Hambantota, where we lived. His friends advised him to buy a ‘six-valve’ Grundig radio for better reception. They coaxed him, saying he could, of course, as the Principal of St. Mary’s College, afford to buy a powerful radio. But Thaththa refused to discard his old Philips radio. Its front screen looked like an old rag, and the pilot light on the upper left corner was dead.

On a Saturday morning, Thaththa told me to get ready to go to Ambalantota, a bazaar about eight miles east of Hambantota. It was the first time he talked to me in two days. He had ignored me after I broke the glass door of his book cupboard. I played with my brothers in the front yard, throwing stones at birds. One stone went through the window of thaththa’s library and smashed the glass. I expected him to punish me, and I pleaded with Amma to protect me from him. His decision not to talk to me hurt me more than a slap from him. I was scared that he would not speak to me forever.

Amma dressed me up for the trip. She applied coconut oil to my head and talcum powder to my face. She pinned a small, folded handkerchief to my short-sleeved blue shirt. The handkerchief was to wipe my face if I sweated and clean my running nose. My new shoes were a bit too tight, but I was proud to wear them.

I enjoyed the bus ride to Ambalantota, a bustling bazaar with imported saappu badu (shop items). At the bazaar, thaththa looked for the radio shop for a few minutes. The shop owner recognized him, invited us to his shop, and offered tea. I got a small packet of biscuits and a ‘cool’ drink. He sipped hot tea sitting under a fan while chatting with the shopkeeper, who showed us five radios. Two were Philips radios, and the other three were Grundig. They all looked beautiful and smelled imported.

When the shop owner switched on the wooden-cased Grundig radio, a tiny sharp light appeared at the top left corner of its face. It was a tube light about one inch long and was vertically fixed to the beautiful, off-white, thick cloth covering the upper part of the radio face. The fabric looked like the lace that Amma weaved at home. The radio had a row of piano key-like square white buttons under the screen. The shopkeeper explained that they helped select wavebands, fine-tune between two overlapping broadcast stations, and reduce background noise. I touched the fabric and asked him about the purpose of the light tube. He explained that the beacon showed the battery power level. He connected the radio to a BEREC radio battery, a black box with several nodules on top of it.

Thaththa showed me the ‘long wave’ and ‘short wave’ bands on the glass panel below the screen by moving a vertical needle in the panel with one knob. The panel was backlit, and thaththa read aloud the country names printed on it. The other knob tuned the radio to different stations. He showed me how to lock the radio to a radio station by finding a city name on the panel. After tuning it to a BBC overseas programme, he exclaimed, “Look, now we are in London.” I visualized London City – Buckingham Place, double-decker buses, Prince Charles and Princess Anne. The cover page of the exercise books I used had a picture of the prince and princess. The radio was broadcasting a musical programme in English. I could not understand, but I enjoyed the beautiful music. I decided that one day I would visit London. Thaththa said that he liked the smooth sound quality of the Grundig and offered to buy it.

The shop owner offered a significant discount and a six-month payment plan. He told thaththa that the radio could be returned if he was not happy with it. Thaththa haggled with him and got an additional discount. he promised the shop owner that he would recommend the shop to teachers at the college. The shop owner was happy and gave thaththa a few items free — a ceramic disc with three holes to hold an aerial, a copper wire to ‘earth’ the radio, and 20 yards of wire for the aerial. The shop owner switched off the radio and carefully packed it into the radio box and other paraphernalia into another box. He also sold thaththa a new BEREC battery at a discounted price.

The two boxes were too big for us to carry to the bus station. Fortunately, thaththa met two of his students, and they willingly took the boxes to the Hambantota bus. There was only one empty seat on the bus. Thaththa asked me to sit, and he stood next to me. I shared the bus seat with a Buddhist monk and kept the two boxes before me. The priest wanted to know where I had been and with whom. My father intervened and told the priest we had just bought a radio.

The priest recognized my father, greeted him, and asked a few questions about the college and the drinking water situation in Hambantota. When we got home, thaththa told me the radio was my birthday gift, but I should share it with my three brothers. I did not believe him. A few months ago, he promised me an air gun for my seventh birthday. But at the last minute, he decided a gun was a dangerous weapon a young boy should not have.

Amma had already removed the old radio from the small round table in the sitting room, washed the plastic flower vase on the radio, and rearranged the plastic flowers. She kept a folded old bed sheet to cover the new radio when not in use. Thaththa asked me to fetch Polydole, his golaya (acolyte), at the church. (Polydole was a pet name – his real name was Aelian. He was a distant relative of the parish priest; he stayed at the vicar’s lodge and attended school). I ran to the churchyard and found Polydole in his small room. I told him about the radio and the new BEREC battery. He stopped reading and followed me home.

Thaththa scouted the backyard to find an open space for the radio’s aerial. He took the ceramic disk, tied a long piece of twine to the first of its three holes, and tied another piece to the third hole. He then tied the aerial wire to the middle hole of the ceramic disk. Then, he removed two inches of the rubber insulation of the wire end to expose its metal strands to radio waves. He then told Polydole to climb the large kohomba (margosa) tree in the compound and secure one twine rope to a branch. After that, Polydole climbed the nearby murunga tree and tied the second twine rope to a branch about 30 feet above the ground. The aerial was long enough to reach the radio through the grill above the large window in the sitting room. Amma worried that the aerial might conduct lighting to the radio in a storm. Thaththa dismissed her fear, saying lightning would not come along the wire.

Thaththa and Polydole sat on the sitting room floor and checked the radio after taking it out of the box. Thaththa read the instruction sheet several times and connected the ‘earth’ and ‘aerial’ wires to the radio. My brothers, Gamini and Nihal, fought to grab the empty radio cardboard box. Thaththa gave the battery box to Gamini, and Nihal disappeared with the radio box. He then plugged the radio into the battery, rechecked the instruction sheet, and switched the radio on. First, there was no sound. He fiddled with the two knobs on the radio for a while, and suddenly, we were listening to soft and clear music.

Thaththa announced that only he should switch on and off the radio. As the radio’s owner, I was to cover it when unused. Nihal told Gamini that he could play a song with the set of buttons below the upper screen of the radio, just as one would play a piano, and Gamini believed him.

Weerasinghe, thaththa’s friend, came to see the new radio that evening. He listened as thaththa explained its novelty and various features. The radio had six valves, which gave sufficient power to get radio signals from anywhere in the world. Thaththa showed him how to tune the radio to BBC. They carefully studied the radio and read all the countries on the screen. Weerasinghe told thaththa that it was a good purchase.

A little later, Nihal came running and announced that the radio chassis was hot. Thaththa ran to the sitting room, checked the frame, and switched off the radio. Weerasinghe said that the radio’s chassis becomes hot because of the heat generated inside the radio by the six valves. Thaththa was not convinced. The following weekend, he took the radio to a repair shop in Hambantota to check why the chassis had gotten heated. A technician at the shop told him not to cover the radio with cloth or plastic sheet when in use.

The new radio changed thaththa‘s life. After the morning news, he and I listened to a Philippine-based Catholic radio broadcast. It was a half-hour program with three old Sinhala songs and 15 minutes of catechism. In the evening, we heard the news and, once a week, we all listened to ‘Sandeshya’, the BBC Sinhala Program on contemporary world affairs. From 7.30 to 9.00 in the evening, thaththa kept the radio on. As a family, we listened to musical programs and political discussions of the hour. Once a week, Thaththa brought his senior college students to listen to a world geography programme on the radio. He was pleased when the students commented on the sound quality.

Thathatha discussed news and programs on the radio with Weerasinghe in the evenings at our place. I sat on his lap and listened to their discussions. Usually, he talked and expressed his views, and Weerasinghe mostly agreed with him. If the debate continued, thaththa offered Weerasinghe a shot of arrack and Amma invited him to stay for dinner, which he gladly accepted.

The radio travelled with us from Hambantota to Wattala and to Hendala. At each house, it was prominent in the sitting room. Over time, Amma became addicted to radio programmes. Most of her morning time, after we all went to school, was spent listening to Sinhala songs, news, and short dramas. I remember listening to a radio programme in Sinhala on Kennedy soon after his assassination in 1963.

I once saw a radiogram in the parlour next to the college chapel. It was a piece of furniture that combined a radio and record player, a large box with many knobs. A beautifully carved thin teak plank and thick cloth covered its front. Once, a teacher took us to the chapel and played a gramophone record of Ave Maria on the radiogram. We were astounded by the volume of the radiogram and the beauty of the smooth music that emanated from it. I inquired from the teacher about the brand of the radiogram. He said ‘Grundig’. I told my father about the radiogram and its brand, and he promised to visit it.

The Grundig radio has been with us for more than nine years. Thaththa once told me that German technology was much more advanced than Dutch or English technology. After thaththa’s death in 1967 we found it cheaper to buy a transistor radio than a BEREC radio battery for the old Grundig. We reluctantly switched to a small transistor radio, allowing one of the memories that tied us with thaththa to fade.