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Wednesday, October 6, 2021

AIR Mahalaya Special Broadcast 2021- My Observations

Every year on Mahalaya, All India Radio - Akashvani broadcasts a “special dawn programme' entitled ‘Mahisasura Mardini’. Originally composed in 1931, the 90-minute musical presentation was performed live on radio. Later, it was shifted to the pre-recorded format. The recitation narrates the creation of Goddess Durga to save the Gods from Mahishasura, the buffalo demon. Celebrated composer of the yore, Pankaj Kumar Mallick had composed the tune and top artists of that time had lent their voice to the devotional songs, which are accompanied by a Chandipath, narrated by the legendary Birendra Krishna Bhadra. For the last 90 years, welcoming Goddess Durga at the break of dawn on this day by tuning into Akashvani’s Mahisasura Mardini has been one of the most vital rituals for all devotees of Devi Durga across the globe, specially the Bengali. Like past this year also All India Radio aired this most significant musical dawn program on October 6, 2021 from 3:50 am IST.

As a radio enthusiast it has become a habit of mine for past several years to wake up at the dawn on Mahalaya and tune into my radio looking for the distance stations of All India Radio, which I normally find hard to tune in my location during normal transmission hours and every year my best toys are successfully catching loads of difficult signals from all over the country. This year I had the opportunity to listen following medium wave stations of AIR using my Degen DE-1103 receiver equipped with a telescopic antenna.

Observation Time: between 0400 IST to 0530 IST.

549 KHz – AIR Ranchi*
621 kHz – AIR Patna A*
648 KHz – AIR Indore
657 KHz – AIR Kolkata A*
675 kHz – AIR Chattarpur
684 kHz – AIR Port Blair
711 kHz – AIR Siliguri
729 kHz – AIR Guwahati (Special Mahalaya Program in Assamese)*
747 kHz – AIR Lucknow A
756 kHz – AIR Jagdalpur
801 kHz – AIR Jabalpur
828 kHz – AIR Silchar*
846 kHz – AIR Ahmedabad A
891 kHz – AIR Rampur
954 kHz – AIR Nazibabad
981 kHz – AIR Raipur
1026 kHz – AIR Allahabad A
1179 kHz – AIR Rewa
1242 kHz – AIR Varanasi*
1269 kHz – AIR Agartala*
1296 kHz – AIR Darbhanga
1386 kHz – AIR Gwalior
1404 kHz – AIR Gangtok
1593 kHz – AIR Bhopal A

(*) indicates stations with strong reception.

Meanwhile, at present the most amazing online platform for listening various AIR regional stations is ‘NewsOnAIR’, the official mobile app of All India Radio, where one can tune into numerous AIR stations from all the states of India. On Mahalaya dawn checked into this platform too and found the following stations with Mahisasura Mardini.

National & International:  AIR Neighborhood Service -2, AIR World Service -1, Port Blair PC
Andhra_Pradesh: AIR Vijayawada, FM Rainbow Vijayawada
Assam: AIR Assamese, AIR Silchar
Bihar: AIR Bhagalpur, AIR Darbhanga, AIR Patna, AIR Purnima
Chhattisgarh: AIR Ambikapur, AIR Jagdalpur, AIR Raipur, AIR Saraipali
Delhi: FM Gold, FM Rainbow, AIR Indraprastha, AIR Rajdhani
Gujarat:  AIR Gujarat, AIR Bhuj
Jharkhand: AIR Chaibasa, AIR Daltonganj, AIR Hazaribag, AIR Ranchi, AIR Ranchi VBS, FM Rainbow Ranchi
Kerala: AIR Kochi FM Rainbow
Madhya Pradesh: AIR Bhopal, AIR Chattarpur, AIR Gwalior, AIR Indore, AIR Indore, AIR Jabalpur, AIR Rewa
Maharashtra: FM Gold Mumbai, FM Rainbow Mumbai, Samvadita Mumbai
Odisha: AIR Cuttack FM Rainbow
Puducherry: AIR Pudu Rainbow
Rajasthan: AIR Jaipur
Sikkim: AIR Gangtok
Tamilnadu: Chennai FM Gold, Chennai FM Rainbow, AIR Tamil, AIR Coimbatore Rainbow, AIR Kodaikanal, AIR Madurai, AIR Tiruchirapalli.
Telengana: Hyderabad FM Rainbow
Tripura: FM Ujjayanta,  Agartala PC, AIR Belonia
Uttarakhand: AIR Almora, AIR Dehradun
Uttar Pradesh: AIR Agra, AIR Prayagraj, AIR Gorakhpur, AIR Lucknow, AIR Najibabad, AIR Varanasi, AIR Rainbow Lucknow
West Bengal: AIR Siliguri, AIR Murshidabad, AIR Kolkata FM Gold, Kolkata FM Rainbow.

©Prithwiraj Purkayastha, VU3TQD
QTH: Jorhat (Assam)

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