April Fool

“Aap Sandeep Sahu hain na?” [“Aren’t you Sandeep Sahu?”], asked the cute little girl in her early twenties, an AK 47 flung casually across her shoulders. Three black spots tattooed into her chin in the shape of a reverse triangle added a rare sparkle to her exquisitely carved face. Perhaps for the first time in life, I felt like a celebrity of sorts – a poor man’s Shahrukh, if you like. Here was a girl – and a dreaded Maoist at that - deep inside the forest somewhere on the Kandhmal-Ganjam border seeking me out in a group of six journalists from Bhubaneswar – four of them from television channels.
The Kandhamal riots were nearly two weeks old by the time. Dozens of Christians had already been butchered and hundreds of houses burnt. The top Maoist leader in Orissa, Sabyasachi Panda alias Comrade Sunil had invited a group of journalists from Bhubaneswar to confirm that the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Sarasawati, which triggered the riots, was the work of Maoists. The girl in question was one of the three guarding the ‘leader’.
As I said “Yes”, the girl in battle fatigues extended her mehndied hand to shake hands with me. Still wondering why she was particularly interested in me and not the four television journalists, I asked; “How do you know me?.” Pat came the reply; “We listen to your voice on the radio every day.” It was only now that I realized her interest in me had very little to do with me and everything to do with my reporting for the BBC Hindi radio. I could see an old radio set kept at a distance. “In these forests, there are neither newspapers nor television. Just about the only way of keeping abreast with what is happening in the outside world is the BBC radio”, said the girl in Hindi. And added, for good measure; “BBC ki reporting hamesha sabse santulit hoti hai” [BBC’s reporting is always balanced”]. I must confess this compliment (for the BBC and not so much for me) is among the most prized possessions of my 16-year long association with the BBC.
“Ah, the power of radio!”, I told myself. Coming as it did from the most unlikely of listeners, I thought this was the most definitive endorsement of radio news in general and BBC Hindi radio news in particular. I thought about the millions of people without access to newspapers, television or the internet – and not just in the forests – who need their daily staple of ‘news’.
The best part about working with the BBC was that it was a brand name that did not need an introduction anywhere even in my part of the world, where Hindi is spoken by very few – or, for that matter, any part of in the world. During my tours to the hinterland, I have often been amazed at the number of people who follow the BBC Hindi radio.
A year before the interview with the Maoist leader, I had accompanied Rehan Fazal and Sushila Singh from the Delhi office of BBC Hindi to Kalahandi – that perennial metaphor for poverty, starvation and much worse. The occasion was the outbreak of cholera in the area, which had already killed over 25 persons in Kalahandi and neighbouring Rayagada. The Aaj Kal programme was to be aired live from Bhawanipatna , the district headquarters of Kalahandi, that day. Suresh Agarwal, a faithful listener of BBC Hindi, had come from Kesinga, 40 km away, to meet the honoured guests from Delhi. “Here is a long time listener of our service”, I told Rehan as I began introducing Suresh after the day’s work was over. “Suresh Agarwal?”, quipped Rehan almost immediately. Suresh’s was a familiar name for nearly all BBC Hindi anchors and producers because he frequently participated in listener-based programmes like Aap ki Baat BBC ke saath. That is the kind of bond that the Hindi service had built with the listeners over the years.
Conventional wisdom suggests that BBC radio is the old man’s trip to the land of nostalgia and is aeons away from the mindspace of the young. But I have been surprised by the number of young people who follow BBC Hindi – though on the net rather than good old short wave radio. I have received dozens of friend requests on Facebook from young men and women, who primarily know me from BBC Hindi.
I am having a tough time explaining to all the people whom I meet or interact with on the phone or on the net why BBC Hindi needs to close down. My fate is not vastly different from my Editor Amit Barua’s the other day when he had to answer the same question worded differently from an army of angry, disconsolate listeners during the ‘BBC India Bol’ programme. One particularly irate listener actually accused BBC of ‘cheating’. “Aap hamare saath is tarah ‘dhokha’ nahin kar sakte” [“You cannot cheat us like this”], he said.
Even as I write this, I find that diehard BBC Hindi radio fans in the heartland are preparing to write to the British foreign office and even burn the effigy of Prime Minister David Cameron in a last ditch bid to save what they love. Many of them know, in their heart of hearts, that there is virtually no possibility of a rollback of the decision. But they will protest nevertheless. Because, as they say, “We are like that only.”
[PS: Given the profusion of writing on the subject both in print as well as on the net, I am a little surprised that nobody has so far (as far as I know) alluded to the irony of the date. After all, transmission of BBC Hindi radio will stop from All Fools Day. But I am pretty sure there would be many listeners, who will feel that BBC ne hamen April Fool banaya.]