The Orange Radio

The Orange Radio

The house was a single story dilapidated building with peeling paint and patches of cement coming off, exposing the bricks beneath. It was dark inside the house because the windows were bolted and closed. Even if someone opened the windows, the thick undergrowth surrounding the house would keep the cover of darkness intact. No light came inside the house and once, when the oldness of the house was young, it tried to come inside, but it felt trapped and suffocated and so, it quickly get out of the god-forsaken place.

The other presence in the house, apart from the dark, was a thick layer of dust accumulated over time owing to years of disuse. The dust was everywhere - on the sofa, the wooden cabinet, the dining table in the corner and on the glass shelf filled with forgotten medals and shields and fading photographs. Even the occasional cobweb and its resident had dust on them. The arachnid had probably died ages ago. The only thing that remained now was its papery outer body hung on its own dusty cob-web, like an executioner who tripped and got executed by his own noose.

The house had remained. Lost is the remnants of time, a silent place, bearing witness to a happy past of a family which had outgrown the forgotten house and moved away to a new place - a swanky 20^th floor penthouse apartment in one of the numerous skyscrapers coming up around the city.

And the house would have continued to exist in that lost moment had someone not broken the glass window in the kitchen and climbed inside.

The person who came through the window was an old man, a very old man, probably as old as the house itself. Like the layer of dust inside the house, the old man had a layer of muck all over his body, his clothes and his hair. He did not have any chappals and his clothes were tattered, barely covering his loose, hanging, wrinkled skin which enveloped a skeletal frame.

Once inside the house, he moved slowly through the dust and darkness, his bare feet making impressions across the floor. He seemed to be looking for something and he seemed to know his way around the house. He opened all the cabinets and the glass shelf, trying to find some treasure that only he was aware of. He scattered all the contents of the cupboards around the floor, but he could not find what he was looking for. He looked under the sofa and under the dining table, in all the rooms but to no avail. Finally giving up, he sat on the floor and silently wept.

Two days and two night passed and on the third day, some kids approached the quite, deserted lane of the house to play cricket. As they came nearer, they heard sounds of some ancient music coming from the house. Puzzled and somewhat scared, they ran off to tell the elders of the ghostly music from the haunted house.

Soon, a police van came around to the house and two strongly built constables pushed the door aside with their mighty shoulders. A huge cloud of dust flew out from within the house, as the door smashed open.

The policemen entered the house and behind them entered a lean lady dressed in a simple sari, looking anxious and frantic. 

In the darkness, they could make out the outlines of the furniture. And on the old armchair sat the figure of the old man, his legs crossed and his eyes open.

Next to him on a low table was kept an old faded orange radio and from it came sounds of the music that had interrupted the children’s game. It was a sad, low sound. It was old music. 

“Dad”, the lady whispered, as she knelt down beside the arm chair. But there was no answer. She slowly moved her hand towards the old man’s, and pressed the wrinkled fingers, but they did not press back upon hers. In her heart, she came to the terrible realization and sobbed quietly in the darkness of the house. The old man’s vacant eyes continued to gaze into a distance, their expression surprisingly calm.

The lady slowly looked back up at the orange radio playing the music and her sobs turned to silent cries.

The Orange radio had been a gift to the old man from his wife on their twentieth wedding anniversary. After his wife’s death, he had brought up his teenage son and daughter. Her death was probably a big blow to him, but he never wept for her, he never shared his sorrow or his feelings with anyone. What was there to share? Life moved on.

But the heart knows its pain and it finds ways to express. The longing in his heart manifested itself in the form of his obsession with the radio. On Sundays, he would spend the whole day on his armchair on the veranda of his house, listening to the radio. Most of the times, the radio emanated the heavy baritone of a man speaking about current news and events and other times K L Sehgal or Suraiya sang soulful Hindi songs that filled ones heart with joy and ones eyes with tears.

In his last days, the old man had forgotten everything – his long dead wife, his daughter and his son, his grandchildren, his brothers and his sisters. He even forgot his name and the sound of it. He no longer knew the hows, the whys and the whats that are the daily routines of life. The chilly hands of Alzheimer’s slowly squeezed his mind and his memory and drained out the very essence of living from him. Somehow, in his emptying out mind, the only thing that remained was the orange radio. He would ask everyone who came to meet him or speak to him about his radio.

“Where’s my orange radio?” he would say softly, clearly agitated to have lost it “Please give my orange radio”

Finally, he had found the Orange Radio and along with it, he had found his peace.

How the radio worked after all these years, no one knew. Maybe it was also waiting for its owner in the dark dusty place, just like its memory waited in the old man’s dark dusty mind.