The Rise and The Decline of the British Broadcasting Corporation

What did I have in common with Rajiv Gandhi, the day his mother Indira Gandhi was assasinated? Yes, both of us tuned to the BBC World Service Radio broadcast to catch the latest news on this ghastly incident, while All India Radio played it cool by playing classical music the entire day.
Those days Indians had limited exposure to the media and the BBC was often a gateway to unbiased truth and often wholesome entertainment.
This was perhaps why even now with the media explosion, when BBC announced the shutdown of its Hindi services there was a mass public outcry and the pullout was delayed for another year.(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bbc-hindis-last-broadcast/146024-55.html)
I was a staunch fan of BBC World Service Radio broadcasts when I was a kid. I was often made fun of by my friends and their parents as the "radio kid" because of my habit of spending hours with one ear to the radio. While the newspapers highlighted domestic news and the certain events were often overlooked, I was enlightened on the war in Serbia, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the partisan war in Lebanon, the Israeli invasion of the Sinai peninsula, the Bhopal gas tragedy, and countless assasinations and rebellions.
I was for some time given the duty of collecting news that was to be read out at the school assembly by students who took turns to read it.
For this purpose, every day at BBC news bulletin time, I was glued to the radio set scribbling down the news headlines in a shorthand that I evolved and that only I could read.
My news extracts were for the most part of happenings far away from the realm of Indian interests and I doubt whether even a few of the students assembled actually grasped what was read out, not withstanding the fact that their parents hardly read even newspapers so busy they were with their daily jobs.
It was not just for the news that I tuned into the BBC. I was a regular listener of pop music programmes, dramatized versions of short stories and even quizzes, all on the air. Those days, the BBC correspondent in India was Mark Tully and he was a familiar voice on the news reportings. (Mark Tully eventually retired, has written a couple of books and has now settled down in India).
BBC had a special programme on Christmas where a popular writer read out excerpts of his own book for BBC listeners. Once such Christmas I was introduced to Frederick Forsyth's classic short story "The Shepherd".
I experimented with other radio channels too. But the Voice Of America was unashamedly biased to US interests and the anchors had an annoying yankee accent, Radio Moscow reeked of propaganda, AIR always began with "The Prime Minister today...", Radio Ceylon was just a golden oldies Hindi music channel, Germany's Radio Deutsche Welle had powerful radio transmitters that ensured a clear reception but lacked in content.
So it was the BBC for me. I owe a lot of my soft skills to that early on exposure to BBC newsreaders and anchors. While reading books taught me spelling and grammar, the pronounciation, the accent and most importantly the tone in context to the subject was a result of BBC's tutoring.

Walk a Mile in My Moccasins

This event comes to my mind when I listen to Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colours".
The most interesting time of my life, I feel when I was in Nagpur doing my pre-degree. It happened so that I was in a college which happened to be the place where most of the children of Nagpur's affluent families did their studies. I had a Colonel's son as a friend who used to call me Matz long before anyone else started calling me by the same nickname. In fact he made everybody's name sound to end with a "Z". So Bhopardikar was Bhopz and so on.
Sometimes I felt intimidated by the elite crowd that surrounded me. For instance, the Colonel's son used to boast that he took just four mintutes to shave with his electric razor, boasted about his computer and his plans to go to the USA after TOEFL; and all this was at a time when the television was yet to become a fad in Indian homes.
I used to wear plain white canvas shoes to college. Tired of the plain-Jane attire, I had a wicked idea - I would paint my shoes in myriad colours, just for the fun of it. So off I went and bought a can of fevicol and a set of oil paints.
Once in my room at the hostel, I carefully mixed the fevicol with the oil paint till I decided it was a perfect mix. With a large paintbrush I painted my shoes in shades of five or six colours till I thought it was a job perfectly done.
I wore the shoes next day to class, hoping everybody would admire my bright newly painted canvas shoes and pass it off as some sophisticated imported model.
But the colonel's son, he came to me and in a conspirational tone whispered, "Matz, you have painted your shoes, isn't it? HA HA HE". That got my goat; I had that shrinking feeling and I wished I could just vanish into thin air. ;)
On the day of the pre-degree model exams I decided to get back at those who had made an ass of me that day.
I had a friend from Manipur called Thokchom Gambhir Singh (He was an ardent fan of the Manipur freedom movement and denied being a Hindu and preferred saying he belonged to the Meitei religion, which existed long before the Bengalis and the Hindus overran Manipur, according to him).
Manipuris as a fact are well dressed and like to flaunt the latest smuggled(?) electronic items that they most probably get from China or Burma. I decided that on the day of the prelims, I would dress like a North Eastern would.
So I did one more of those crazy things.
I asked Gambhir whether I could borrow his outfit for a day. He readily agreed, being on good terms with me, not like the other Bengalis in the hostel who had a mutual distrust for him.
So I pulled on a Chinese made T-shirt that clung to my body showcasing my physique, with a leather jacket pulled over it. Then the thick blue stretchable jeans that you get only in the smuggled markets. Then the Adidas shoes over the thick cotton socks. And to cap it all I borrowed Gambhir's flashy wrist watch that had a calculator as an accessory on it. I sprayed myself thorougly With imported deodorant and then I was ready.
I arrived at college with a clear mind having prepared well for the exam and prepared for any eventuality.
The inviligator in charge, a nerd, who knew me well coz most of the time I was top in class, gasped in disbelief. I didn't turn to look at the girls, being too shy to acknowledge any giggles, if they happened to come.
When I returned the stuff back to Gambhir, I felt that I had been a different man for one day. I had been literally walking in Gambhir's shoes!