Community Radio Poem by Prabhakar Subramaniam

When we bought a radio player

Our house became famous in the street.

On nights when new film songs were aired

Neighbours and strangers stopped by to listen.

Children looked at us with resentment

Pleaded with their father

To buy them one.

For the first few days

It was on round-the-clock.

'Magic! ' someone said,

'A small box,

Talks, sings, counsels, gives news! '

Elderly people went away saying

How mysterious it was

Wondering what the world was coming to,

As the literates tried to explain to them

What they learnt from their physics books

Who invented it and how it worked;

Envy flashed like lightning

As someone whispered loud enough for us to hear

'He is a union leader (referring to my father)

He must have got it as a bribe! '

Only we knew how we saved money for months

To buy it and how we kept our end of the bargain

Topping in the class tests.

We ignored the remark

As mostly everyone feted us;

We were pointed at

When we went out,

The grocer attended to us first,

The milkman gave us less diluted milk,

The flower girl gave us roses free

And the servant maid was extra courteous;

We were celebrities for a while

Till our neighbour got a new, costlier set

And took the fans away.