Dear, ..........,
Namaskar. I will continue with more events related to the Transmitter site at Pampore. When a transmission would be going on, there would be almost nothing to be done. Just sit, hear the programme transmitted, and take readings of all the meters monitoring the working of various stages of the system. The staff on duty for each session would be an Assistant Engineer or a Senior Engineering Assistant, as Shift Incharge, one Shift Assistant, one technician, one Diesel Driver and a helper. During the day additional staff would be on duty to do maintenance on the system. We would cook rice in one of the rooms for our lunch and dinner. We all would contribute and bring supplies for our lunch, tea etc. In earlier days, we would eat and leave the utensils to be washed by the chowkidar. One of our seniors once took an objection to this practice of getting the plates washed by the chowkidar. He advised that we should do it ourselves. Since that day, we would always wash our own plates and cups after eating and drinking from them.
I remember each member of the staff who would do duties there. All were different personalities. We had a senior who would never contribute for tea etc. But we would always serve him first. Some staff members would not feel comfortable feeding him free but none except one of our colleagues would dare to tell him to contribute. Speaking to him had no effect. He would not contribute. The person would just ignore. He would also do the same with cigarettes. When asking for a cigarette, he would always say that he had forgotten to carry a packet. On one occasion, when we were in the jeep on our way from the studio centre to the transmitter centre and we reached a market place on the way, one of the staff members asked the driver to stop. Then that staff members asked the senior person to cough out some money for buying the cigaretes. The money was given and the cigarette packet purchased. The senior was not given the packet, instead it was kept in the transmitter hall control table. Anyone wanting to smoke was asked to pick out one from the packet on the table. That day the senior looked miserable. For a few days afterwards he would carry his own cigarettes.
In my shift, the senior was the shift incharge for some weeks. He could not get any cigarettes from me as I was a non smoker. The technician was a smoker. The senior would take the cigarettes from him. The technician would oblige but would always complain to me. This was affecting his budget. He changed from cigarettes to beedi. (Beedi is low cost smoke normally used by labor class.) So when the senior again asked for the cigarettes, the tehnician told him that he did not have them because he had shifted to beedi. The senior made fun of him but asked him to give him one. So for many days, this continued. The technician now started keeping the beedi packet in his socks and tell the senior that he had stopped smoking. Instead he would smoke only in the bathroom with the door closed. Soon the senior noticed some smoke coming out of the bathroom window. He had it inspected immediately. He found the technician smoking. The technician then stopped smoking altogether.
While all such things were happening, I was trying as much as possible to learn. I would do reading of technical books while on duty. I would try to learn as much as possible about the equipment. Senior Engineering Officer would come to the transmitter centre from the studio centre once a week to supervise our working. I would literally hide myself from him. I would fear that he may ask me a question which I might not be able to answer correctly. I would heave a sigh of relief when he would go back.
There was a room in the area designated as Emergency Studio. This was the studio to be used in case of an emergency when the main studio would cease to exist for any reason. This studio was required to be kept in readiness at all times. During my learning process, I would take performance measurements on the equipment. One day, while doing the checking, I noticed one equipment to show very high distortion figure. But once connected normally, the unit was working fine. I knew I was making a mistake while doing the measurement but could not figure out. There was a senior (another senior - not cigarette related) on shift. I sought his help. He was not able to find out the mistake that caused the wrong reading. I tried it next day too but same result. I asked a couple of staff members too and still the problem remained unsolved. On fifth or sixth day, I spoke about this to a junior who without even looking at the setup told me that I must have made one mistake in connection. I had overlooked an essential connection. I did the measurement again with the right signal input connection and the performance figure was shown as satisfactory. I felt better. Next day when it was the day for the senior officer from the studio to come for supervision, I decided to put the problem to him. I took the measurement with wrong connection as I had done initially and asked him to help. He tried for some time but failed to notice the wrong connection. Next week, I did the same to him. I now did not fear him. Instead he tried to avoid me. He would not come for supervision when I was on duty. Later this person became a Chief Engineer in All India Radio but I had shifted to Doordarshan. He would always look to me with respect while I was in Delhi a couple of decades later.
Bye.
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