Once Upon A Time - Short Story Collection

Radio Love

December 25th, 2004

Samyuktha had been married five years — too soon for them to take pleasure in each other's absence. Yet, she was happy when Jay took to the shores, that morning, without waking her up. Her friends, back home, do not share this sentiment. They believed love and marriage were two separate bodies.

She rolled on the mattress with the vestiges of laziness still clinging to her and remembered their courtship when he recited Sarojini Naidu's poems to impress her. He neither had the finesse nor the voice to deliver such gravitas, but his foolish attempts charmed her.

Theirs was a love marriage. She met Jay at her friend's engagement ceremony. One of their mutual friends, Shanti set them up and later claimed they were made for each other which Sam found unbelievable.

How could you tell? She once asked.

Just, you know, it's a gut thing, Shanti said, and there the discussion ended.

Jay has an engineering degree in electronics and communications and worked for the Indian Railways as a Signals Engineer, and Samyuktha has a Master's degree in English Literature. She occasionally grappled with poetry or short fiction, nothing published so far— stored in a my-documents folder on her windows-2000-desktop computer, that she rarely dusted.

Jay smoked, and Sam didn't like the smell of it. Her perfume made him sneeze. She didn't understand his interest in signals, esp. radio waves. He carried his amateur ham radio equipment everywhere, and she carried her pocket dictionary that belonged to her father.

What got her was the light in his eyes when he spoke about radio waves, Morse code and complicated signal bands. She saw the same light when she agreed to go out with him, when they shared their first kiss and when she said the ultimate 'Yes'. She found the same light when they made love too.

After a year of marriage, his waveband tinkering was the only sound she could hear during the nights before sleep consumed her.

Every Sunday after lunch, he left the house to meet his group of amateur radio enthusiasts at a local tea stall. They addressed each other with their call signs, Jay's wasVU3RJK. During the early days of their marriage, he brought these people home a few times. When Sam nodded off through their conversations, he took the cue.

Now Sam looked out the window at the bright sun, blue sky dotted with coconut leaves at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The weather was pleasant with a cool, humid breeze, and the smell of salt was very new to her nostrils.

The ham enthusiasts, after years of struggle through bureaucratic hurdles, obtained special permission to hold a DXpedition here — to showcase and establish communications with other ham enthusiasts throughout the world. If all communications failed radio would still function was their only belief.

The group looked and sounded like every-day people with regular jobs and simple woes in their day-to-day lives but turned into radio fanatics when they assembled. Their expedition leader, Bharathi had converted her hotel room into a mini radio station with a Yagi antenna.

Sam took time in her bath, had light breakfast at the common dining hall and wandered through the M.G.Road filled with Christmas decorations, to while away the time.

She didn't know why she was on this trip, and Shanti's words came back to her.

Fifth-anniversary gift, eh? Shanti squeaked when she told her about the trip.

Yeah, the fifth anniversary, she repeated. Five years...went on a repeat in her mind.

Come on. It'll be fun. It's a chance to rekindle your love, Shanti insisted.