Jhoomritelaiya : Latitude Radio

Once you accept the fact that Jhoomritelaiya doesexist, there are several ways you can get there. Catch any train that passesthrough Koderma, and get down there and figure out that you are actually inJhoomritelaiya (Koderma exists as a separate town, but its railway station is inJhoomritelaiya). Or drive up around the beautiful hill-ringed Telaiya lake anddown NH 31. Jhoomritelaiya is a small town - one main road, a few chowks withGandhi and Netaji statues - and before you know it, you're almost out of there.So you'll stop, and maybe you'll walk into the electronics shop run by ShyamSundar Singhania.

Singhania will welcome you with a jovialhospitality that will pleasantly surprise you. That's because you haven't metanyone else from Jhoomritelaiya yet. They are all similar in this Jharkhandtown: gregarious and exuding a certain old-world decency that you had given upon. It's a town of good people.

You know of Jhoomritelaiya because you rememberthose Radio Ceylon and Vividh Bharati listeners' choice programmes in the '70sand '80s where half the requests seemed to come from this place which no one hada geographical fix on. Maybe you even remember Ameen Sayani pausing and sayingthat he had just got a telegram (a telegram!) from Jhoomritelaiya requestingthat he play "Phoolon ke rang se" from Prem Pujari. Maybe you've seensome Hindi films where the name was mentioned, without the scriptwriter havingany idea about where it was, whether it was at all.

But once upon a time, Jhoomritelaiya was at theheart of the world mica trade. Everyone here either owned a mica mine, or workedin one, or traded in the mineral. "There were more than 600 mines aroundhere at that time," Singhania will tell you. "Everyone was rich,everyone was happy, and since we are far off from any big city, we turned on theradio, and we sent requests and felt proud when our little town's name was heardby the world."

Then, the invention of cheaper syntheticsubstitutes for mica, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was the material'sbiggest foreign market, and the government's ban on tree-felling for miningpurposes devastated the business. Today, only a few mines are operating.Mine-owners like Singhania have shifted to other businesses. And the foreststeem with mcc militants.

Almost anyone above 40 you will meet inJhoomritelaiya will tell you how he sent hundreds of song requests to radiostations in the '70s and '80s. To save time, they had the addresses printed onpostcards and had rubber stamps made of the names of singers. So all they had todo was write out the title of the song, stamp the singer's name and send it off.They will tell you that it all started with big mica trader Rameshwar Barnawaland paan-shop owner Ganga Prasad, both now dead. Everyone in the town thenstarted sharing their passion. In the old-timers' eyes, you can still relive theinnocent thrill of having your names read out on radio. At the height of hisobsession, Barnawal would send 40 to 50 postcards a day.

Walk over to Barnawal's sprawling mansion on aside street and meet his sons Pankaj, who runs a drug store now, and Chandan,who has a two-wheeler agency. They don't listen to the radio any more. "Nowwe watch TV. Those days are no longer there." Go out then to the mainmarket and ask people if they listen to radio. No, no, no.... None of them do."We all got mired in the business of life," Shyam Sundar Barnawal (norelation to Rameshwar) will tell you. "In those days, we would hand overthe keys to the mica mine to the manager in the morning, and lock up in theevening. The day we spent relaxing." In the '60s, when Sampatlal Purohit,editor of Hindi film magazine Yugchhaya, wrote in his editorial that he did nothave enough money to build a house, Jhoomritelaiyans spontaneously sent himcash. "People from all over India would send song requests to us so wecould mail them with a Jhoomritelaiya address," Barnawal will tell you."They thought this gave their requests a better chance."

Poke underneath the bustle of the town andeverywhere you will find the wistful remembrance of a joyous past. Wistful, notunhappy, definitely not melancholy. The people of Jhoomritelaiya have acceptedtheir diminished economic status with good humour. You will not find anger inthis little community. Not even when you meet Dayanand Bhadani, scion of thefamily that owned Chotturam Hosilram, India's largest mica-mining company.Thirty years ago, the Bhadani family figured among the 50 richest families inthe country. Today, Dayanand Bhadani owns an electronics shop. He will show yousheets of mica that he still has, including the variety that was used to coatspaceships: Rs 9,00,000 a kg. "Our mines and factories employed 10,000people. We sold mica two or three times a year, and the rest of the year, wewould travel around India. Diwali time, each family would spend Rs 20,000-25,000on crackers." Then the mining business died. "No, mines don'tdie," he will tell you, with a smile. "People's energy dies. If thegovernment changes its policies today, we can start off again." Yet heseriously mulls the option of seeking his fortune elsewhere.

Kishore Chatterjee runs the electronics shop nextto Bhadani's. His great-grandfather heard of mica and came to Jhoomritelaiyafrom Bengal in 1896. "People here loved music so much that when the micabusiness ended, most of them started music and electronics shops," he willtell you with a chuckle. But he has now started a shop in his ancestral village:"Back to pavilion."

They are all settlers, descendants of plucky menwho came here from all over India in search of mica and money and created thistown between the two villages of Jhoomri and Telaiya. Life was so pleasant thateven those who came on jobs never left. Then times changed. Millionaires were nolonger millionaires. There was massive unemployment. People migrated, peoplestarted their lives all over again. It became just another small town.

No. It became almost another small town. Do notfor a moment think of leaving Jhoomritelaiya without a feeling of loss. BinaySingh, son of a mining engineer who came here to work and never left, runs acomputer academy among other things and represents the happy, pioneering, can-dospirit that built this town. "We are very hopeful, now that the new stateof Jharkhand has been created," he will tell you. "We have mineralwealth, we have entrepreneurial spirit. We will build new industries. In the'60s, we had 100 crorepatis in this town. Why can't we have that again?"

You would like to believe him, with all yourheart, as you are leaving Jhoomritelaiya. At the edge of town, maybe you willstop for a last cup of tea.And maybe you will meet a young man who will tellyou: "The other day, there was this phone-in interview with Kumar Sanu onDoordarshan. And someone called up from Jhoomritelaiya with a question!"You will see those smiles on those honest faces, and you will leaveJhoomritelaiya happy. In fact, there are several ways you can get toJhoomritelaiya, but there's only one way you can leave the place. Happy