Feb 13th Static Between The Gods.

World Radio Day

On the morning of February 13th, when the world was congratulating itself on celebrating World Radio Day, Akshara was trying to remember where he had kept his old transistor.

Ptah, who had lately taken to appearing near electrical appliances, materialised beside the bookshelf.

“Appropriate,” he said, tapping the rusted antenna. “Radio and Climate Change. Transmission and transition. Frequency and fragility.”

Akshara squinted at him. “The theme was that two years ago.”

Ptah waved this away. “Themes are like RJs. They repeat.”

Akshara had, in fact, written something titled Transmitting on World Radio Day. There had also been a post on World College Radio Day, where he had earnestly wondered why every Indian campus pretending to be Harvard did not have its own radio station—preferably with background violins as in a Lage Raho Munna Bhai montage.

“But today,” Ptah continued, “you must write about trust.”

“Trust?” Akshara asked. “In this climate?”

“Precisely. Radio survives because people still trust a disembodied voice.”

Akshara remembered a story from Bihar. A young man who had built a tiny transmitter that broadcast within a small radius. If someone’s cattle wandered, or if a family needed blood donors, he would announce it for a nominal fee. A hyperlocal information service before the phrase existed. A European tourist found him charming, ran a capsule on him, and soon the Ministry found him illegal. The transmitter went silent. The village went back to shouting.

“See?” Ptah said. “Trust without license is rebellion.”

“And license without trust is bureaucracy,” Akshara muttered.

They debated the sacred rivalry of the age: radio versus podcast.

“Define podcast,” Ptah commanded, in the tone of an examiner.

“A pre-recorded, edited digital audio file distributed via RSS feeds and directories, consumed on demand.”

“Ah,” Ptah smiled. “In other words, radio without risk.”

Radio, after all, was live. It could trip. It could stutter. An RJ could crack a PJ and regret it instantly. Generation X still clung to it like a familiar evening prayer. Millennials downloaded their wisdom in curated playlists. Both believed they were superior.

“And yet,” Ptah said, “radio still has more listeners.”

Akshara remembered the 70s and 80s—no television, no internet. News bulletins that silenced entire neighbourhoods. Film songs that stitched strangers together. Participation in a program felt like divine audition. Somewhere along the way, he had assumed radio had retired to nostalgia.

Then supermarkets acquired their own frequencies. Magsons FM, with “RJ Somebody or the Other,” announcing discounts between retro hits. In-house radio. Corporate bhajans.

“Adaptation,” Ptah said. “Like climate change. Either evolve or evaporate.”

Akshara turned to college radio. In 2011, Indiana University had launched a movement that went global by 2012, pulling hundreds of campuses into radio marathons. He wondered again why Indian campuses—so eager to replicate American cafeterias and accents—had not embraced campus frequencies. Why had no filmmaker in the Dharma Productions universe set a climactic confession in a college radio booth?

Ptah leaned forward. “Because radio is commitment. You must show up on time. You must fill silence.”

That, Akshara realised, was the true terror.

Radio teaches oratory without filters. Customer service without call centres. Community awareness without trending hashtags. It forces business students to speak, finance students to emote, engineers to improvise. It builds responsibility through schedule grids and problem-solving through dead air.

“And trust?” Akshara asked.

“Trust,” Ptah replied, “is when a farmer believes the rainfall advisory. When a fisherman adjusts his sail because of a storm warning. When a citizen believes the news bulletin.”

Goa, before 1961, had one of the most powerful radio networks in the region. Its Portuguese-controlled broadcasts travelled as far as Africa, binding colonies through invisible waves. The signal was empire. The signal was memory.

“Transmission is power,” Ptah said softly. “But power without credibility is static.”

Akshara glanced at the Ministry guidelines for setting up community radio: eligibility clauses, frequency allocations, content restrictions, non-commercial mandates. The state, like a cautious parent, supervising decibels.

“So what do I conclude?” Akshara asked.

“That radio survives because it is imperfect,” Ptah replied. “Podcasts are curated immortality. Radio is mortal presence. In an age of edited outrage, live vulnerability is radical.”

The old transistor crackled as if on cue. A faint voice emerged—weather updates, traffic diversions, a devotional song slightly off-key.

Akshara adjusted the antenna.

Trust, he realised, is not in the technology. It is in the voice that returns every day at the same hour, even when the climate—political or planetary—refuses to cooperate.

Ptah faded, satisfied.

The broadcast continued.