a death in our house

It lived a lifetime in our household and then it died a quite and a not so dignified death. It was our radio, a large black Philips with sharp angles. I remember the day uncle brought it home. He took it out of its box and setting it on the table he tuned into a station that played bengali folksongs. We, standing in front of it as though we expected it to perform some miracles, looked at each other and smiled. Since then, years passed and through those years the radio remained as another member of our family, as we shifted from place to place. Through the day it would sing and talk, sometimes it would make strange noises and while at other times it would remain silent, put to sleep by turning its knob.
I left my boyhood behind and entered adolescence, uncle became father of two children, and much later he became owner of his own house. And all this while the radio aged as inconspicuously as the hour hand of the clock. Its corners became rounded, paints came off in shy flakes; one day its handle went missing and later it lost its original knobs one by one. In its early days I would subject it to lot of torture. I had immense curiosity about the inside of every electronic objects and often I would open up its entrails on the sly and on some occasion like this I would damage it so badly that it would refuse to play until uncle took it to the neighborhood mechanic. Uncle would haraunge me to no end. However once it was old enough it frequently stopped working on its own.
It was surely dying .It died the day the TV came home.
Although we all had our own private moments with our late friend it was Baroma (uncle’s wife) who was really close to it. While she worked or relaxed it would faithfully sit beside her and entertain her throughout the day. She always listened to Bangladeshi stations, which played Bangla film songs sung by voices whose ascent always felt strange to the ears. When aunt was not listening to it, it was my turn to wind the knob back and forth in search of some hindi film songs which were a rare commodities, however if there was a cricket commentary on, the radio belonged to me for the day. In the evening, after uncle returned from his clinic in Pandua, it belonged to him. He would invariably tune into Calcutta station and listen to the news and other news related programmes.
Today when the radio no longer plays, I feel nostalgic about those Bangladeshi songs, voices of those anchors and newsreaders who became so familiar that it was very easy to imagine how they would have looked in person, and also those ads of coconut oils and auyrvedic medicines that promised a happy stomach and smooth bowel movements.
Let the soul of the radio rest in peace.