Monitoring Akashvani's Mahisasura Mardini on Mahalaya 2020

For many years now it has become a habit for me to wake-up before dawn on Mahalaya morning and tune into the radio to listen the historic radio program Mahisasura Mardini on Akashvani. As the local FM in Jorhat and nearby MW station All India Radio Dibrugarh do not play this epic Chandi Path Birendrakrishna Bhadra along with beautiful songs, for decades tuning Akashvani Kolkata or Siliguri station on radio has become a very essential part of Mahalaya celebration in our home. Our neighbors may have already switched to other modern ways to play Mahisasura Mardini but we are still sticked with radios. Ever since my association with DXing, which is a hobby to try tuning and identifying distance radio stations, this Mahalaya dawn become of immense importance to me to tune as much Akashvani stations as my radio can catch both on Shortwave and Mediumwave bands. This is because all the stations play this common content and they can be easily identified the by just knowing it's transmission frequency. Like many yesteryears, this year also the Mahalaya dawn is not an exception for me. Found a load of MW stations carrying that most popular musical content of Durga Puja festival. But unfortunately could not heard a single station  even on shortwave with Mahisasura Mardini! So, is this an indication for the end of one of the most heard shortwave network of world? Let's leave this question for policy makers and experts, but surely the following findings on mediumwave are still very encouraging for radio lovers to stick with most adventurous electronic hobby DXing! 

Here is a list of station I heard today carrying Mahalaya special program:

My tuning time from 4:00 am IST (2230 UTC)

549 kHz- Ranchi A

657 kHz- Kolkata A

684 kHz- Port Blair 

711 kHz- Siliguri

747 kHz- Lucknow 

756 kHz- Jagdalpur 

828 kHz- Silchar

954 kHz- Nazibabad 

My tuning time from 4:30 am IST (2300 UTC) 

981 kHz- Raipur 

1008 kHz- Kolkata B

1026 kHz- Allahabad 

1044 kHz- Mumbai A

1179 kHz- Rewa

1242 kHz- Varanasi

1296 kHz- Darbhanga 

1386 kHz- Gwalior 

1404 kHz- Gangtok 

My tuning time from 4:50 am IST (2320 UTC) 

621 kHz- Patna A

648 kHz- Indore 

666 kHz- New Delhi B

729 kHz- Guwahati (heard a different Mahalaya Program, not Mahisasura Mardini)

774 kHz- Shimla 

This year many radio lovers, including my seventy years old mother, tuned to Mahisasura Mardini on their mobile using NewsOnAir app with digital sound quality and audio without any disturbance, indicating the real fact that for most of the radio listeners ease in listening with best audio quality matters most not the receiving device. 

©Prithwiraj Purkayastha (VU3TQD)