Dear,.......,
Hello. Yesterday, I narrated Din Mohamed story. Today, I will go back to All India Radio. Four AE's have been covered. It is now the turn of AE-5. He belonged to some village in Kashmir and stayed with his family in his family home there. He would stay alone in some rented accomodation in the valley and would request for duties in such a way that he would be able to go to his village home and return only after spending a couple of days every week there. It was said that he did not have arrangements for cooking at his rented place. Since there was not a proper canteen in our office, he would be almost starving himself everyday. He would just take tea and some kashmiri bread. His colleagues would tell me that he was a miser and would save most of his salary. He would buy orchards. This was his ambition to become a big orchard owner. As soon as I joined service, he fell ill and the doctors diagnosed it to be some stomach related ailment. It was told to him that the problem had been created due to his frequent starving and irregular food habits. He got operated upon. He was told that he should be careful and adopt regular eating schedule. He joined back and resumed his duties. He was a changed person now. He tried to compensate for his earlier habit of starving into overeating. Within a month he was ill again and passed away. Doctors diagnosed his death to have been caused by overeating. It was ironical that someone from his home appealed for financial contribution from us colleagues after his death. Only Rs. 30/- was collected. Everyone counselled the family to sell some of the orchard land instead of begging from us.
AE-6 was a different type of person. He would doubt that everyone was conspiring against him. He would be extra careful and tense during his duty period. I performed some of my shift duties with him. Even small problems during transmission, would make him very nervous. He lacked confidence. I could not learn anything from him. I would hate to be on duty with him.
Our boss - the station engineer was a gentleman from Tamilnadu. In short he was a Madrassi. He seemed to me a very knowledgeable person. I was scared of him. He was keeping an eye on me. My interaction with him would prove to him that I was a technically incompetent person. He would put lot of pressure on me. I would usually run away from having to face him. If he would be in control room and I needed to go there, I would avoid going there. I would go to control room only after he had left. But there were occasions that I would be caught unawares when he would come to the control room unannounced and find me there. On one such occasion, I was on the sound mixing console controlling audio levels when a record was being played from the adjacent playback booth. The quality of the record played back was not good. He asked me why the quality was not good. I had no answer. He said that even a lay person would be able to tell that. He asked me to call his wife on the telephone and even she could explain it to me. I got shamed. I did not call her wife. After a few minutes he returned back to the control room and asked me what had his wife told me. I just mumbled and flushed. He made me call his wife there and then. She told me that the playback fault was called wow and flutter. This was the first time that I had heard that definition. Before leaving the control room, he asked me to meet him in his office the next day. Next day was my weekly off day. I did not dare tell him this. I feared him so much that next day I came to office to meet him. He was there in his office chamber. He told me that I needed to work hard and learn. He told me to study one section of the one kilowatt transmitter circuit and come back to him after a week to discuss it with him. I worked very hard to learn and presented myself in his room after one week. He examined me and found that my knowledge was poor. But he appeared to be satisfied with my attempt to learn.
At the end of my first year, he had to sign my probation clearance papers. One day I was called by his secretary. He gave me a sheet of paper. He asked me to acknowledge receipt of this paper. It was an extract from my Probation Clearance report. The extract was adverse. It mentioned that I lacked the technical knowledge and I needed to improve it to clear the probation. I read it in the presence of the secretary. I became nervous and my hands were trembling. I thought that this was the end of my job. I enquired from the secretary what it meant. He told me that my job was not gone. This was an advice for me to work harder. I did not show it to anyone. I worked harder and learn from people already working there. Someone advised me to get a book on electronics by Turmen. I got the book - a fat one but could not understand much. My basic knowledge was minimal and this book was too advanced for me to follow. Someone asked me to assemble a radio set from parts to learn electronics practically. I purchased loose parts and assembled a three band valve radio set. A Technician in the office guided me whenever I needed any help.
Next year, the station engineer got transferred. I was relieved. A new station engineer again from Tamilnadu took over. He was a high profile one and did not have time to keep an eye on me. Before he completed one year in this posting, he was transferred out. My probation was cleared in his period of posting. I was relieved to get the probation clearance verdict. I stayed on in the job.
Bye now. Tomorrow would be a break for the blog. I would be there again on 15th.
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