'There's so much to hear' thus spake A.R. Rehman in the Worldspace ad on TV, with the lilting jingle playing in the background. Alas! the bad tidings that Santa brought the Worldspace subscribers the world over, this Christmas: there won't be anymore to hear!
On December 31st, 2009 midnight, as the world drowns in the crescendo of celebrations, the lights will & sounds will go off at several Radio stations, as also at numerous (5 Lakh & counting) receivers across the world. Music would've died in its latest avatar: the fee-based, ad-free, genre segregated, crystal clear radio service, that enthralled so many, for the past 10 years. What was that about them whom god loved, dying young. Rings so true for you, mi amigo!
My affair with Worldspace started more out of necessity than heart's call. Being in sales takes you to places where its hard to find your moorings. So you seek out influences that save you from going crazy. So in came the radio, with receiver, antenna and thick cable in tow, into my one room abode at Rajkot (Gujarat). My first memory of her is of watching a muted FIFA World Cup 2006 match on my TV, with Rabindra Sangeet playing on the Radio Sonar channel of Worldspace. What a cocktail of deft movements on the field, being choreographed for me on the balmy soul music of Bengal!
I remember my pining for unrequited love, as I looked out of the window of my ninth floor perch in a high rise in Surat (Gujarat), in utter darkness, watching the cotton bale clouds waft across a moonlit sky, with the radio heightening my woe & yet nursing it, by playing Don Mclean's Crying Channel Amore, a station devoted only to love ballads! Boy, you should've heard the channel on valentines: a recourse availed by singles like me, stuck in thankless jobs in hapless small towns; they played almost all of the best love songs ever written.
And she taught me how to appreciate various other genres, by staying on a channel for sometime. So I had my first taste of Mozart & Chopin at Channel Maestro, lots of Jazz at Radio Riff, contemporary pop & rock at channels Voyager, Spin, and specially fusion at Radio Moksha, the first ever channel dedicated to well-being. Its here, while getting ready for work on countless days, I fell in love with Prem Joshua, Trilok Gurtu, and the ilk. It was here that I first heard the new age spiritual Guru, Vasudev Jaggi's discourses, and he shook me with his usage of the gen-x lingo. I discovered a modern day Osho & perhaps even better.
And how can I forgot how she brought me close to my Raaz, Pichhle Janam Ka, by making me a slave to Radio Upcountry, a channel for Country Music, straight out of Nashville, Tennessee. Having no previous initiation into the genre, I fell in love hook, line & sinker with the genre. Some days the country songs give me a strong feeling of a previous life spent in the grasp of country music. This is one cosmic connection I need to decipher; if it takes me going all the way to the place, so be it!
So much has she become a part of my daily existence, that when I know she's gonna fade away in the next few days, I feel like I'm losing a beloved, who's been diagnosed with an advanced stage of a fatal disease, and has only little time to live, and yet doesn't still know about it. So she goes about humming her manifold tunes through the days, and I just smile achingly back at her, holding back my pain, yet approving of & thanking her for another blessed day she's been with me through.
On second thoughts, I question her destiny of having to go away. Why can't some big industrialist buy out her sick parent company, and revive her. I'm sure her fans will be ready to shell out much more than now to keep her with them.
But in my heart, I know this is not the end. She'll be born again, somewhere, in some other form, and I shall wait for her to come back, and sing to me again. So long, my friend. Here's to a misty eyed farewell.
R.I.P. Worldspace! Long live the music
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