Mukul Kesavan | | Published 13.12.20, 03:10 AM Home-bound during the pandemic, I’ve rediscovered the radio. As newspapers, with a couple of honourable exceptions, merge into an all-India chorus conducted by the Central government and as television news channels race against each other to make performative sycophancy a competitive sport, internet radio has become a sanity-dispensing machine. The last time the radio was so important to me was more than half a century ago when its monopoly of broadcast news and entertainment made it a necessary part of the desi day. Radio Ceylon, Vividh Bharati, the radio plays on Hawa Mahal, the commercials in between song requests, Ameen Sayani’s magical voice on