Dear,........,
Hello. Today I will start my journey that defines major portion of my adult life. I joined All India Radio as Shift Assistant on May 07, 1964, Thursday. This date was selected as an auspicious day for joining a new job. I had stood second in the All India merit list. This job was considered good for me for the following reasons. First its salary was three times than my school salary, next it was a more respectable job than a teacher's at that point of time, again it was a Government of India Job and lastly, I was posted in Srinagar, my home town. I remember my wearing a navy coloured business suit to the office on my first day. Staff at the administration section, where I was asked to submit documents, were very helpful and happy to see a fellow kashmiri boy join the engineering wing. Next I was introduced to the Station Engineer incharge. He deputed a subordinate to take me to the studio block on the first floor of the building. I was taken around and introduced to the staff on duty there. Just then some staff members were getting ready to go to Transmitter site about ten kilometers away. I was invited to join them and make a trip with them. Everyone greeted me enthusiastically. After a journey in the office jeep lasting about half an hour, we were at the transmitter station. The transmitting station was a building housing the equipment for a 10x2 Kilowatt medium wave transmitter and a 7.5 KW shortwave transmitter. I had a look at the field around the building where self radiating mast for medium wave transmitter and towers for the short wave antennas were located. I could not understand much. However I remember seeing some wild growth saffron plants with flowers in the field. I plucked a flower and put it in the lapel of my coat. Now it was time for the morning shift staff to leave. I left with them in the office jeep to the studio centre located in the city. After meeting a few more people, I left for home in the evening.
There used to be three shifts at Studio Centre and another three shifts at the Transmitter Centre, every day. On an average five to six persons would be on duty for each shift. In addition there would be additional day shift for maintenance. Each shift would be for seven hours. On an average, we would get two morning shifts a week from 06 AM to 01 PM, two day shifts from 10.00 AM to 5.00 PM, two evening shifts from 4 PM to 11.00 PM. One day a week would be an off day. There were no other holidays. We would get a compensatory holiday for working on a national holiday. There would be no overtime/ monetary compensation for working more than seven hours a day or working on holidays. However we were granted twelve days casual leave and 30 days privilege leave with no loss in pay every year. For office duty at 06 AM, we were to make our own arrangements, for reaching the studio centre. Office would provide transport for movement of staff from studio centre to transmitter centre and back. Also both the studio centre staff and transmitter centre staff on duty in the third shift would be dropped home by office transport.
I was put on duty in the studio centre from the week day following the week in which I joined the job. My transport from home to office was my personal cycle. I would peddle to office and it would take me fifteen minutes to make the home-office commute. An assistant Engineer would be incharge shift. Myself as Shift Assistant was to assist him. There would be a Senior/junior technician to assist and a helper. Then there would be two other persons on duty with standby Diesel Generators located in a hut outside the studio block. We would be testing the equipment before transmission. The programme would be generated by having live announcements by the announcers and play back of taped programmes or vinyl records on the turntable, all done by the announcer. The News would also be live. And then national news from Delhi would be picked up through special receivers located at Receiving Centre. The receiving centre located half a kilometer away was connected by underground Telecommunication cables to the studio centre. The studio programme signal would get passed on to the transmitter centre through phone underground cables provided by the Telecommunication Department. In the studio centre, we had one "Collins USA Make" one kilowatt transmitter. When Radio services first stated in the town, the programmes were broadcast to the town population through this transmitter. Its coverage range was about thirty kilometers around the transmitter. When transmitter station was separately made with more powerful transmitter, the main programmes were broadcast with the new one. The old 1 KW transmitter was used for broadcast of mainly bollywood songs called "Vivid Bharati".
I got attached to different people on different days. I noticed that everyone was different. Some knew the job well, and some more did not. Then some would be willing to teach and train yet others would do nothing like that. I noticed some good people and some mean ones. Some senior technicians felt offended to be one step lower than a newly recruited shift assistant. They would play games and ensure that I would not learn. They wanted me to be dependant on them for everything. I remember each one of the staff members. I liked some because I would learn from them and would request the duty chart framer to put me on duty with them. One of them, an Assistant Engineer was an elderly person. He lived in the same area that I lived. (His father was a saintly person and would come to our house frequently to meet my grand father. We would call him "Zoo Zoo Ram" because he would always be muttering some mantra and his lips would be moving.) This Assistant Engineer had a great quality. He would leave his home at 5 AM (in rain, snow or dry weather) and walk for about 50 minutes to reach the studio centre. His wrist watch would be tallied with BBC and on reaching office, he would correct the studio clock system by comparing the time on his watch. Half of the other Assistant Engineers would reach the studio centre on their duty days almost just when the broadcast would start. Their assistants would be reaching early to ensure timely start of transmission. There would be days when the staff of such engineers would also get late and transmission would start at the nick of time.
More about the staff and working will follow in the next blob. Bye for now.
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