Between dawn and day, last night’s weary dreams and morning’s impatient wait lies a tortured stretch of silence — one throbbing with anticipation, aching with the leftover fatigue of last day’s frantic final shopping. A silence that is nudged and tickled into a sleepy awareness as dida shuffles around the room, knocking the glass of water on the bedside table at times, stepping over your favourite novel that fell on the ground at others, finally settling down with the radio which starts whining and gurgling almost in protest. And then Birendra krishna Bhadra’s nasal timbre slices through the quiet – you dig deeper into your pillow, blink and close your eyes and let the dramatically shaky voice, the now-rusty music and familiar songs slide over your senses, leaving you with a sweet aftertaste that feels of all the good things to come. This is probably the most enduring memory that a Bengali collects in a lifetime. And Mahishasur Mardini, that is aired on the radio every Mahalaya pre-dawn has turned into not just a precious cultural relic, but an integral part of the identity of our community, our city to be honest.

At the same time, we are reminded that ours is an age of the electronic boom. Mahishasur Mardini is no stranger to the television too. The TV versions of the work, which recounts how goddess Durga battled the asura, flaunted names like Hema Malini and Tollywood stars like Debashree Roy playing the lead. Strangely, what has remained with us of the TV versions are only the names. “With due respect to the makers, the televised versions of Mahishasur Mardini were never a patch on the radio version,” says Ratna Sen, presenter with the All India Radio, which almost had a monopoly on the piece before the FM revolution. The reason why TV has never quite measured up to the radio version, says Sen, is probably because of the sensibilities associated with the ritual of listening to Mahishasur Mardini on the radio. “We are conditioned to the fact that listening to the recital is an early dawn phenomenon. The TV versions usually don’t air before 5 am,” says Sen. Also, since the emphasis is on the shlokas and how they melt into the songs in form of storytelling, what you hear becomes more important than what you see. “The TV takes your mind away from the essence of Mahishasur Mardini – the stirring recital,” says Sthitodhee Saraswati, an IT professional.

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