In his room, Kumaresan too listened to the music from the radio in her house while he worked with the soda bottles. Eventually the song would fade away and only the sound of her whistling would reach his ears and enchant him. Thus, his mind registered every song he heard as a tune that she had whistled. Thereafter, whenever he listened to a song, he closed his eyes and imagined her whistling the tune. The next time he went to the village, he took along a transistor he had bought. It was like taking Saroja with him. From the moment he boarded the bus to when it reached his village, he did not move her from his lap. At times, he clasped her to his chest and dozed off.

Once he was in his village, he could listen to the broadcast from the Trichy radio station clearly and the Kovai broadcast somewhat feebly. His mother was bursting with pride. She placed the transistor on the rock, playing it at full volume, and lay there listening to it. All those who visited her said, ‘Look at Marayi’s good fortune. She lies about on the rock all day, with the radio next to her. You have to be lucky to get a son like this. Just see what he has bought for his mother.’ Kumaresan told his mother a thousand times to keep the transistor safe and Marayi was relieved to know that her son was finally becoming responsible about things.

Before he left, he took the radio in his hand and touched it affectionately. ‘What is this!’ his mother joked. ‘As if you are caressing your wife!’ But it made him so shy that he left without turning to look her in the face. She shouted after him, ‘Dear! Please don’t worry about this radio box. I will take good care of it. I’ll even carry it with me when I take the goats out for grazing.’ Then she wondered if he would miss the radio while he was away, so she said, ‘Please take it with you. Why do I need this?’

‘You keep this one,’ he replied as he walked away. ‘In Tholur we have special radios in which we can also see things, not only listen to them.’

At 8 p.m. on Wednesday nights, the stations broadcast radio plays. Folk from neighbouring fields came to the rock just to listen to them. The place would fill up with people, and even after the broadcast ended they would stay on, chatting. An old woman once came to listen to the play. She said, ‘Look at how the man is talking from inside this little box! Maybe he is like the man in the stories, as small as my little finger!’ Everyone laughed.

Vellapayyan said, ‘Aaya! Aaya! When you yell for your husband, how do people in four other villages hear it?’

‘The wind carries my voice,’ the old woman replied.

Then Vellapayyan said, ‘This is exactly like that. The wind carries so many voices. The radio box pulls them in and releases them to us, see!’