Radio Pakistan apparently has podcasts. They are exactly as rubbish as one might expect them to be. There is a comedy podcast, an international news podcast and a sport podcast. Ridiculously, there is no music podcast, though it must have tremendously rich archives. But I subscribed to the comedy podcast and listened to an episode about one of Patras Bukhari’s comic essays, and it was very enjoyable. They read out the essay, stopping to point out something amusing or a particularly well-turned phrase. The two people on the show, a man and a woman, were civil, discreet and very very Urdu speaking, and it took me back to hearing such voices on the radio and television in my very early youth, before the media liberalisation began and PTV and Radio Pakistan were all one really had access to. And it reminded me of when one of the great actors came my school and read out some of Patras’s essays, and how hundreds of little girls sitting on the ground shrieked and fell over laughing.
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