| The faint voice is almost drowned by the static that fills the small room,
pouring out of the speakers lined up on the tables. All eyes of the dozen odd men in the
room are on one man, huddled over a VHF receiver, twiddling its knobs with a microphone in
hand. When he is not talking into the microphone, he is intently listening to the feeble
voices on the receiver.He is Amateur radio enthusiast Rajesh Sanghrajka. And since the morning of the fateful quake he has been on
the airwaves, night and day, passing on and receiving messages from Bhuj about the fate of
thousands of relatives of the Gujarati community in Bangalore. "This is the fourth day that he has been continuously
on the job, breaking off only for meals. He is doing a tremendous duty and we still |
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wonder what we would have done without him", says Dilip Shah, a member of the Kathchi Gurjar community.
The small room inside the community's Nahar Jain Mahal has been the nerve centre of
communication for the community, while all other forms of communication collapsed when the
earth gave way on the unsuspecting people of Gujarat. Every member gathered in the room
has lost someone or the other. But the enormity of the disaster leaves no time or room for
personal grief. The focus is on assessing the situation and tracing out family members and
loved ones. The modus operandi is simple, efficient and well organised. The queries of
people who either phone in frantically or come personally are scrawled out in single
sheets of notepaper. Each sheet contains single names or the list of entire families. They
are sorted out location wise and handed over to Rajesh, who reads out the names over the
radio to his counterpart at Bhuj. At Bhuj, the Ham radio enthusiasts, in co-ordination
with the locals of the area track down information and relay it back to Rajesh and his
team who then pass on the valuable info to the concerned person.
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There is good news and bad. And mostly it is bad. But with phonelines, mobiles
and the Internet totally dead, the feeble voices wrapped in static that Rajesh deciphers
and passes on is the only news that the panic ridden families can count on. In the span of
4 days, Rajesh with the help of his Ham Radio has managed to communicate information on
more than 900 |
queries that was received. "
It was not only from Bangalore, but we have received calls even from places like Chennai
and Hyderabad. And calls were not restricted to the Gujarathi community alone. We have
responded to queries from Keralites, Tamilians and other communities irrespective of
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Religion, location or creed, who had their near and dear
in quake-hit Gujarat", says one
of the team members.
The first to descend on disaster areas, Ham enthusiasts have been known to pass on
valuable information, much before the arrival of other government machinery. During rail
accidents, at Lathur quake, the Orrissa floods... "There are 40 hams operating in Bhuj now, from Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Hyderabad
and inclusive of 10 from Bangalore. While the travel expenses of three of them were borne
by the Kutchi Gurjar community, the other seven hams shelled out the expenses from their
own pocket", says Rajesh. These ten
hams will be replaced by another batch in the coming weeks. Since there is news that phone
communication links have been restored since the night of 30th January, the existing hams
plan to spread out to smaller semi-urban and rural pockets where the phone lines are still
dead. The international Ham community was also quick with assistance. "Two hams from Turkey and Sweden pitched in and were
eagerly tracing out the plight of four Swedish Girls who seemed to have been in the area.
And I was helped by a ham in Bhuthan, who relayed my signal onto Bhuj, as my direct
broadcast was very feeble", says
Rajesh.
Rajesh was first initiated into the ham circuit during his final year at School way back
in 1974.His is a ham family. There are four of them including his wife. He took the
mandatory examination after a brief stint of coaching in the field at the Vishweshariah
centre for Science and Technology. Incidentally, Bangalore has the largest number of ham
operators, numbering over 2000.The youngest 12 years old, while the oldest member who
passed away last year was actively 'hamming' till his death at 85! After attending the
exam, which includes basic electronics and Morse Code, the successful candidates are then
issued Amateur Radio Operator Licences by the Government. This usually takes about a year
as the Ministry of Defense and Information and broadcasting have to issue clearances. This
is in order to prevent licences being used for commercial purposes or as a threat to
National Security. The licence then entitles the operator to import the expensive
equipment duty free, which works out to about Rs.40,000 for a good quality High Frequency
Transceiver. Nowadays, this equipment can be purchased locally, instead of importing it
in. Cheaper second hand sets are available locally, which have been salvaged from maritime
ships that have gone in for sophisticated satellite navigation equipment.
The ham club includes its share of celebrities too. The late King Hussain of Jordan, Rajiv
Gandhi, Priyanka and Kamalahasan.
The ham operator is known in ham circles by his 'Call sign', which is an
alphanumeric code. His name is referred to as 'Handle'.
For almost 96 panic stricken hours, between the 26th and the 30th of January 2001, the
airwaves across Bangalore and Bhuj reverbated with a call sign called 'VU2 RPS', but for
almost everybody in Bangalore who had someone stranded amidst the quake, he is better
known by his "handle' - Rajesh
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