Once, I fixed an old transistor radio for a customer and found a station replaying Dara Singh's matches from the 60s. The commentary in Telugu was as fierce as the holds, chala bagundi. Sometimes the oldest signals carry the truest strength.

I had a customer from Kabul last year, trying to get his father's old transistor to pick up Radio Azadi in the middle of our Kakinada dust storms — took me four tries to find the right capacitor. That team's spinners remind me of that radio: nobody polished the knobs or advertised it sleek, but you switch it on and the signal cuts through everything, bagundi. The refugee-camp beginnings are