Watch: India's radio man who fell in love with radios as kid, owns envious collection of rare radio sets now

Meet India's radio man - Indravadan Mistri, a resident of Ahmedabad, who has been in love with radios ever since he can remember. He first heard one as a kid, when he had not even started going to school. "At that time, I started going to a friend's house. I fell in love with Binaca Geetmala because of my friend. He had a National Echo radio which was Made in England, so I started going to his house from my place -- from Kankariya to Mani Nagar -- on a cycle. I used to reach there at 8 in the morning to listen to Binaca Geetmala on the radio," Indravadan Mistri says.

Binaca Geetmala was a popular radio programme that began its broadcast in the early 1950s. It was a countdown program featuring popular Hindi film songs. Indravadan now wanted a radio of his own and insisted that his uncle buy him one.

"I insisted that my Uncle buy me one, so he bought me a second hand radio called Sandip. S.A.N.D.I.P, which used to be assembled in India. It's body used to be made here, and its chassis and parts used to come from Japan. It was a tube or valve radio from Japan. My uncle bought it second hand for 120 rupees, and gifted it to me," he adds.

In that era, Indravadan recalls, radio owners needed a license to own one, for which they had to pay the princely sum of 2 rupees annually.His beloved Sandip radio went kaput after some time, but by then, his love for radios had already turned into a passion.  

"In 1963, I bought a tape recorder cum radio for 400 rupees. It was made by the Crown company. It had Medium Wave and Short Wave radio. It had a tape recorder, which after some time stopped working. So, I opened it up and did some experiments on it. I learnt how to change its belt -- on my own tape recorder, then I learnt how to change its Head, which had worn off."

Mistri, through trial and error, learned how to repair a radio and a tape recorder on his own and started taking jobs to repair radio sets for his friends. That gave him some income, which unsurprisingly, he invested into his passion. "From then till now, per month, I buy a minimum of 4 radios, which I repair. If I am not able to repair them then I break and throw them away, but mostly I try to repair them, and then I play them."

After spending a lifetime with his radios, of which he has over an astounding thousand or more, Mistri says he is ready to part with them so that other radio-lovers can enjoy listening to them.

"If anyone is interested in radios then they can come to me and buy...err take any radio. I don't want to sell them. I blurted out the word 'sell' by mistake, I don't want to sell anything. I am ready to give them free. Any radio-lover can come to my house and they can just pick any radio they like and take it with them to listen to it."

Mistri enjoys listening to Indian Classical Music on his radio sets the most. Mistri says he is ready to hand over his entire collection to the government to establish a radio museum anywhere in the country. (PTI)