She sells sea shells in Seychelles

My high school classmate, "M," who has lived and worked with her husband and kids in different parts of the world, tells me that of all the beaches that she has been to, there is nothing to beat the sands and the waters of Seychelles.

I will take her word--I have never been to Seychelles.

But, I do have a personal connection to Seychelles, from my high school days in Neyveli.

The radio and the print media were my connection to the outside world.  Whenever I had free time, I fiddled around with the radio--a big, diode/triode valve radio--and tried to listen to foreign radio stations on the shortwave frequencies.  That was how I accidentally tuned into a radio station from Seychelles--Feba Radio.  Turns out that there is now even a website for it, though I am not sure how much of it now is the same as the station that existed then.   

If memory serves me well, it was partly an evangelical station.  But, they had interesting secular programs as well.  If only my memory were clearer!   During one of those programs, they read out names and brief bio info on listeners.  So, I mailed them a card with my information.  It must have been when I was in the ninth or tenth grade.  A few days later, I got a reply from the radio station--that my name would be featured on a certain date and time.

I was excited. I mean, this was a huge deal for the 14 or 15 year old teen that I was.  I told my parents about it.  They thought I was a nutcase (and they certainly were right on that one!) and didn't seem to care much about this at all.  The day came.  The evening hour arrived.  And I sat next to the radio with the station blaring away.  My heart was beating away like crazy ... and then, yes, the sound of my name through the radio.  Oh, what a thrill that was!

Radio Seychelles was a minor interest compared to the BBC and the VOA.  But, for some reason, every once in a while those signals would fade away completely and I would then have no option other than to shut the radio down.

Such was my excitingly geeky teenage years!

One day, as usual I headed out to my friend's home, from where we went to the library, or lazily biked around especially past a few "special" homes.  My friend, Srikumar, said that he had heard the strangest news on VOA--American helicopters had crashed in Iran.  It was like a huge news scoop!  The following morning, the newspaper had lots of details on the ill-fated American attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran. 

Decades later, as I read what I have written, all these sound strange even to me.  It is quite unbelievable how much everything has changed in a matter of three decades. There is a good chance that kids in Neyveli don't even bother listening to shortwave radios anymore.  I am not even sure how many of them read newspapers.  After all, for those who are interested, as I was and as my friend was, now there is the internet. 

I wonder what changes are coming over the next three decades.  More than that, I hope Seychelles will still be around, and not go under.