Akashvani: A Century of Stories from All India Radio
About this ebook
For decades, All India Radio or Akashvani, India's national broadcaster, has been 'the sound of India'. Be it Jawaharlal Nehru's iconic 'Tryst with Destiny' speech, shows such as Binaca Geetmala, cricket matches, movies or, more recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Mann ki Baat, AIR has been and continues to be the primary source for programmes on news, entertainment and knowledge for many Indians. But there are innumerable fascinating stories associated with the radio channel itself.
For instance, did you know that Rabindranath Tagore dedicated a poem to AIR called 'Akashvani', which was adopted as the Hindi name? Or that an AIR producer was one of the first civilians to be let inside the Golden Temple after Operation Blue Star? Or that noted Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali used to make his disciples listen to AIR's Urdu service to understand correct Urdu pronunciation?
These and many other such tales make up Akashvani: A Century of Stories from All India Radio. With anecdotes from producers, broadcasters, radio jockeys and listeners, this book is a must-read to understand AIR's pivotal role in the average Indian's life.
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About the author
Vikrant Pande has published fourteen translations till date, many of them bestsellers, like Ranjit Desai's Shivaji: The Great Maratha (HarperCollins) and Girish Kuber's Tatayan, published as The Tatas: The Family That Built a Business and a Nation (HarperCollins), which won the Gaja Capital Business Book Prize for 2019. He cowrote, with Neelesh Kulkarni, In the Footsteps of Rama: Travels with the Ramayana (HarperCollins), a travelogue containing unknown stories of Ramayana, which is now being made into a travel show by a top OTT producer, as well as Akashvani: A Century of Stories from All India Radio (HarperCollins). He also authored The SBI Story: 200 Years of Banking (Westland Publications). He is currently working on an account of fascinating operations done by the special forces (HarperCollins). A graduate of IIM Bangalore, Vikrant Pande enjoyed twenty-five successful years in his corporate career before turning to writing full-time.
Neelesh Kulkarni is a management graduate from the Faculty of Management, Delhi University, who quit the corporate world in 1985 to start his own company, which he still runs. He is a theatre and voiceover artist with over fifty years of experience, an avid reader and traveller, a poet, a cricket commentator and a public-speaking coach. He lives in Delhi with his artist wife.
