‘Buffalo’ in the drawing room
In 1971, there was no border TV station at Amritsar to counter Pakistan Television’s war propaganda. It was in 1973 that Indira Gandhi inaugurated Punjab’s first Doordarshan kendra in the city. Till then, the studios were in New Delhi. One of their popular slots was ‘Javaan Tarang’. Our college was the first to get an invitation to participate, and I was deputed to select the students, two boys and two girls, and accompany them to Delhi. There was no time to get reservation and we took the plunge in the general compartment of the overcrowded Janta Express.
It was already dark when the train reached the Beas, and it stopped midway on the river bridge. It didn’t move for more than an hour. We were well ensconced on the luggage racks. The light from an occasional matchstick would be received with a momentary sigh of relief. In that perfect silence of the dark and crowded compartment, I asked my students to rehearse what they had planned to sing at the studio the next day. The folk songs were well received and we heard loud clappings from an invisible audience.
At the next railway station, there was a scramble for water; a couple of Coca Cola crates on the platform disappeared in minutes. The same scene was witnessed at the subsequent stations. We had a late-night dinner at Jalandhar railway station.
None of us had visited a TV studio. The students presented a set of popular folk songs. When the shooting ended, we were asked to collect our remuneration cheques. We didn’t know that we would be paid. So much so that the students now wanted to have a good time in Delhi.
I got their requests to stay back, in writing, and caught the morning train to Amritsar. Since my own remuneration was much more than theirs, I was overwhelmed and throughout the journey, made many castles in the air. When the train reached Amritsar, I took a rickshaw and we rode through Hall Bazar where I stopped, and after examining LP record players, purchased the newly arrived HMV 666 stereophonic machine with two independent 5×5 hi-fi speakers.
Proudly, I stepped into my house, and without even changing, unpacked the ‘trophy’ and switched it on at full volume. The LP, an album of Sheikh Farid’s verses from Guru Granth Sahib, had just been released to mark 800 years of the birth of the first Punjabi poet. It had an introduction by Khushwant Singh and lilting renditions by Neelam Sahni, Manna Dey and Jagjeet Singh, under the baton of S Mohinder. My father, then in his late eighties, enjoyed the music, but at the end, asked me how much I had spent on it. I had spent Rs 1,500 — all of what I had received from the studio. He wryly remarked, ‘You could have bought a buffalo instead.’ I still have that heritage hi-fi ‘buffalo’ in my drawing room.
