Twenty-six minutes in Mulshi, and twenty-three prayers
A quiet September on Mahakatha Radio: one listener in Mulshi, 26 minutes of mantras, and 23 prayers, with healing and family the most common themes.
On Wednesday, 30 September, the last day of the month, the radio was doing what it does every hour of every day. It was playing mantras sung by Preeti, one after another, with no advertisements between them. There was no festival greeting that day. There was only the rotation, the same steady run of Hindu and Buddhist mantras that goes out 24 hours a day, through the night and into the morning and back again. On the station's small ledger, that Wednesday was the busiest day of September.
It is worth saying plainly what "busiest" means here. Across the whole of September, Mahakatha Radio was heard by one distinct listener, for a total of 26 minutes. The listening came from one country, India, and from one city, Mulshi. In the same month, 23 prayers were offered. September, then, was not a month of crowds. It was a month in which the station kept its hours faithfully, played to a single listener, and was trusted with prayers for healing, for family, for peace. That pairing is the story of the month, and it is not a sad one.
One listener, one city
Radio has always had a strange relationship with numbers. A broadcast goes out whether one person hears it or many do, and the singer sings the same way either way. Through September the mantras played around the clock, free and without interruption, as they do in every month.
The listening that did happen had a shape. The busiest hour was 18:00–19:00 India time, the early evening. None of the month's listening fell between midnight and 5 am. Those are small facts, drawn from 26 minutes, and they should not be asked to carry more meaning than they can bear. They say only that the hour with the most listening was an evening hour, and that the small hours of the night went unheard this month.
Mulshi is the only city on this month's map. One name on a map is a modest thing, and also a precise one. A larger station might report its listeners as percentages and regions. This one can name the single place its sound reached, and leave it at that.
There is an intimacy in that kind of exactness. When the numbers are this small, nothing is hidden inside an average. One listener, one city, one country, one busiest hour, one busiest day. The month can be read whole, the way a short letter can be read in a single sitting.
Seventy-nine mantras, seventy-five of them different
The station's log for September records 79 mantras played, and 75 different mantras among them. The figure is a quiet reminder of how wide the station's library is: in a single month, the rotation reached across dozens upon dozens of distinct mantras, each sung by Preeti.
There were no festivals on air in September, and so no festival greetings. The radio simply played its regular rotation, in which Lakshmi and other mantras take their turns alongside the rest. There is a particular dignity in an ordinary month. On festival days a greeting plays on air; in September there were none to play. An ordinary month is just the music, offered without occasion.
For anyone arriving for the first time, the station's guides are a gentle place to begin, and the radio itself is always live.
Twenty-three prayers
If the listening was small, the prayers carried their own weight. In September, 23 prayers were offered, and anyone who wishes to can offer one on the station's prayers page. Read for their themes, they gather around the oldest human concerns. Healing came up most often, in 8 of them, with family close behind and peace after that. Exams, work and marriage each appeared a couple of times.
Those six words make a fair portrait of what people carry. Healing and family lead. Peace comes next, a quieter wish and a harder one to name. Then come the concerns of a life in motion: exams, work, marriage. None of these prayers is reproduced here, and none should be. They were written to be held, not published. Their themes are enough to show their weight.
The station reads Prayer Requests aloud at 7 am and 7 pm India time. In September, none of the 23 prayers was read on air. The prayers remain what they were when they were written: words offered, and received.
There is something fitting in that for a month like this one. September's figures show a station heard for 26 minutes. They also show a station to which 23 prayers were offered. A radio station is usually measured by who hears it. This month, it was also measured by what it was given to hold.
October: the goddess, hour by hour
The quiet will not last long. October brings Navratri, from 11 to 20 October. During Navratri, each goddess's mantra will play at the top of every hour, from 5 am to 11 pm India time. On festival days, a festival greeting plays on air. For anyone keeping count of the days, the station's guide asks the simplest question: which day of Navratri is today?
Later in the month, on 29 October, comes Karva Chauth. The station has a guide to what to chant at the puja and moonrise, and, as on every festival day, a greeting will play on air.
September was a month of one city, one listener and 26 minutes, set against 23 prayers. In October, from the 11th, the goddess will arrive on the hour, every hour, through the day. Whoever tunes in, from wherever, the mantras will be there, playing as they always do: around the clock, without advertisements, and free.