"Mahisasuramardini" is a widely popular early radio programme that has been broadcast since 1932 on All India Radio (AIR.) It is a one and half-hour audio montage of Chandipath (chanting from Chandi) recitation by Late Birendra Krishna Bhadra from the scriptural verses of Sri Sri Chandi, wonderful Bengali devotional songs, classical music and a dash of acoustic melodrama. The program has also been translated into Hindi set to similar orchestration and is broadcast at the same time for a pan-Indian audience. This programme, which began in 1932, is aired every year at day-break on Mahalaya on different regional Shortwave and Medium Wave station of All India Radio or Akashvani. The programme, which started off as a live-performance has been broadcast in its pre-recorded format since the late nineteen-sixties. However, its great popularity remains undiminished even till today and now it is being aired by AIR's FM networks as well as by many private FM channels in India, specially in Eastern India.
Here are my monitoring observation for this year's Mahalaya special early morning program "Mahisashuramardini" transmitted by AIR regional SW and MW stations between 2225 to 0015 UTC (my monitoring time between 2225 to 2330 UTC) of 3rd October and 4th October (IST 0355 AM onwards of 4th October). My QTH geographical location Latitude: 26° 45' 0 N, Longitude: 94° 13' 0, Jorhat in Assam and I have used my JRC NRD-91 receiver and a 20 mt. long wire external antenna for these observation.
On SHORTWAVE:-
AIR LUCKNOW- 4880 kHz- Fair reception
AIR Gangtok- 4835 kHz- Good to Fair reception
AIR Bhopal- 4810 kHz- Good Reception
AIR Kurseong- 4895 kHz- Good Reception
and
AIR Jaipur- 4910 kHz- Fair reception. While AIR Kolkata (4820 kHz) was overtaken by CNR and AIR Guwahati (4920 kHz) was missing on SW.
Stations heard with Mahalaya broadcast on MEDIUM WAVE:-
594 kHz- Chinsurah
657 kHz- Kolkata-A
711 kHz- Siliguri
747 kHz- Lucknow-A
801 kHz- Jabalpur-B
828 kHz- Silchar-B
954 kHz- Najimabad
1269 kHz- Agartala
Some other MW station I heard playing Mahisashuramardini this morning were 972 kHz- Cuttack- A, 981 kHz- Raipur, 1026 kHz- Allahabad-A, 1242 kHz- Varanashi, 756 kHz- Jagdalpur, 729 kHz- Guwahati-A (poor reception of Guwahati) and 810 kHz- Rajkot-A.
