The Wicked Hour

Just as I was about to hit the sack after finishing the previous rambling post on this blog, I looked at the time. It was 12am, and I'm reminded of The Wicked Hour. It used to be the name of a late-night program on All India Radio's FM channel. A quick Google search tells me it is still on. Let me elaborate on my association with this program.

I became a regular listener of this program during my days in class 11 and 12 in DPS. I used to be quite the night owl in those days, staying up quite late every night, even though I had to catch the school bus next morning at 5am. (Just writing about all that is making me nostalgic). Our house had a spare room which served as my bedroom. I used to lie awake in bed at night, studying usually, with the radio playing very softly, so as not to wake the rest of my family up.

This program played on every weekday on AIR FM, from 12am to 1am (or was it 1am to 2am? I forgot). It used to exclusively play English numbers, and people would write in/text their messages to all other listeners of the show. If you're wondering why I was listening to the radio instead of surfing the net, it's because a) I had to study coz that was what I had to do, b) those were the days of dialup, just the sound of the modem dialing would have woken everyone up, and c) no one I cared about was online at that hour.

Anyway, people would send messages under funny, assumed names, like FunFunnyFuntoosh, prehistorictoad, etc. In fact, I liked the last name so much, that I opened an email account with that name. I had to add a 2k to the name, since it was already taken, go figure. Plus I thought the girl in school I was trying to impress would find the name funny (Hint: didn't care. Shocking, I know.)

The background music that always played during that show was Bellisima by DJ Quicksilver. Since then whenever I hear that tune, I'm reminded of those days when the things I worried about were far simpler than the things of today. To add to the soft sound of the music playing on the radio, the temple a few miles away from my house would start its morning prayers towards the end of the show. The intermittent, faraway tinkle of the temple bells could be heard a short while after I had turned off the radio. It used to be truly a surreal experience.

Sometimes my mom, annoyed by the light, would come to the door of my room, and tell me sternly to turn the lights off and go to sleep. She would ask me what the time was, and I would give her the actual time minus 1 or 2 hrs. She couldn't check it for herself since she didn't have her glasses on, so I would get away with it most of the time.

I miss those days.

"Spend your whole life living in the past;

Going nowhere fast"

- Glass of Water, Coldplay, on the pitfalls of reminiscing about the past too much.