A New Wave: this documentary explores the fond relationship between people and radios

Id sit alone and watch your light, my only friend through teenage nights, and everything I had to know, I heard it on my radio, these lines crooned by Freddie Mercury in the hit classic Radio Ga Ga , captured the relationship that young people growing up in the golden age of radio shared with it. Many of those young people, much older now, still hang on to this intimate and nostalgic relationship, refusing to let it be relegated to the past. My Radio My Life , an award-winning documentary set to be screened in the city, captures these stories. Co-director Makarand Waikar explains, The concept was to archive it as a documentary so that anyone in the future, would know what relationship people had with the radio in an era without internet or mobile phones, when everyone depended on newspapers, magazines, and news from the radio. He adds, Several people made decisions based on the radio, they considered it a friend, philosopher, and a guide. The documentary features the stories of six people spread across India, including Uday Kalburgi, a Bengaluru-based radio-restorer, who has founded a museum dedicated to radios. Also included are the stories of V Nallathambi, a Tamil radio announcer in The Voice of America who announced the Apollo 11 landing to Tamil listeners, radio announcers Yunus Khan and Mamta Singh, along with Bharathi Prasad a HAM radio enthusiast with friends across the globe, and a librarian who tirelessly tries to restore his broken radio. Through them, the documentary weaves together fascinating stories of the radio. The documentary does not confine itself to nostalgia, with a group of school students developing a radio programme for the internet. The relationship with the radio may change but you never know what is going to happen in the future. These school students in Mumbai are preparing a radio programme to broadcast over the internet. The message we wanted to give is that golden era is over, but who knows, there may be a platinum era coming up, comments Waikar. With screenings in 36 countries, over 80 film festivals, and colleges across India, the documentary has reached diverse audiences across age groups. The team has deliberately left some things unexplained, not wanting to be an educational documentary but one that facilitates conversations. Three generations used to come together around the radio in the evenings which is a concept that doesnt exist today with everyone on separate devices, says Waikar, adding, We have not explained everything in the film. For example, there is this concept called radio license which most people are not aware of. You can buy a radio, but you can switch it on only if you have a license at home. We have showed the license in the film, but we want the audience to hear an explanation from someone else in the family, who may say, Oh, yes, I used to go to the post office on the first of January each year to get it renewed. ( My Radio My Life will be screened at Bangalore International Centre at 6.30pm on Thursday. Register at bangaloreinternationalcentre.org)