‘Agli farmaish hai Jhumri Telaiya se’: How a small mica town ruled India’s radio waves

Jhumri Telaiya: “Agli farmaish hai Jhumri Telaiya se” — the words once carried a magical ring, setting hearts pounding in this quaint town nestled amid nature and beside a serene lake.

The nostalgia still grips Jhumri Telaiya, part of a rich mica belt discovered by the British in 1890, which shot to national fame in the early 1950s when Radio Ceylon and All India Radio’s Vividh Bharati were inundated with song requests from the town.

As Sri Lanka’s Radio Ceylon, the broadcaster that popularised the iconic weekly Hindi film song countdown Binaca Geetmala, turned 100 this week, memories came rushing back in Jhumri Telaiya, where many still fondly remember it simply as “Radio Ceylon”.

This was the town where countless listeners tuned in eagerly to hear their favourite songs, often thumping tables the moment announcers such as Ameen Sayani declared: “Agli farmaish hai Jhumri Telaiya se.” According to Rajiv Ranjan, a 1991-batch Indian Revenue Service officer with the Ministry of Finance, Jhumri Telaiya’s passion for music is deeply linked to its economic history and the discovery of vast deposits of mica in the region in 1890.

“The mica tycoons of Jhumri Telaiya - Chattu Ram Bhadani and Horil Ram Bhadani - controlled nearly 1,000 mines in the region. These businessmen spearheaded the transformation of the sleepy village into a mining powerhouse with a fondness for music,” Ranjan, son of Late Dr Sarla Singh, a well-known figure there, whose family lived there for five decades, told PTI.

“The famous Bhadani family even got Suraiya, (a well-known Bollywood playback singer) from Bombay, to perform at a concert there. My family, including my father Late Baikunth Prasad Singh, was instrumental in bringing Ustad Bismillah Khan there in 1971,” he added.

“We still remember ‘Dilka Khilauna Haay Toot Gaya’ sung by Ustad Bismillah Khan,” Ranjan recalled.

An alumnus of Sainik School Tilaiya and currently posted in Chennai, Ranjan said the radio craze gathered momentum when a mica trader, Rameshwar Prasad Barnwal, began mailing postcards with song requests to Radio Ceylon on a daily basis for Binaca Geetmala.

“Because Barnwal was a regular mailer, his name started appearing regularly in the requests announced in the show. This motivated other residents of Jhumri Telaiya to send in their requests as well,” said Ranjan.

Soon, sending farmaishein became a town-wide phenomenon. Radio enthusiasts formed informal listeners’ clubs and competed to see who could send the maximum number of requests in a day or month.

According to Ranjan, when All India Radio resumed broadcasting old Hindi film songs on Vividh Bharati in 1957, the station received hundreds of requests from Jhumri Telaiya. To ease the workload, AIR even printed standardised request formats on postcards.

"At a time when radio programmes were a national phenomenon, most requests for film songs received by the stations came from Jhumri Telaiya. The trend started in the early 1950s when Barnwal started sending 20-25 song requests to Radio Ceylon daily. Barnwal’s name, which he heard regularly on the radio, inspired paan shopkeeper Ganga Prasad Magadhiya and electronics trader Nandlal Sinha to follow suit,” says the history of Jhumri Telaiya.

Leading industrialist Rahul Modi, whose grandfather Rameshwar Modi was a prominent mica trader, earlier told PTI, “My grandfather and others used to bet on whose name would be announced on a particular day during the music request programme.” Sainik School Tilaiya Old Boys' Association (SANTOBA) president Ashish Sinha says Jhumri Teliaya has its identity due to radio.

Dr Deepak Kumar, a doctor associated with a UN body, recalled that radios were prohibited in the school hostel.

“We somehow managed to listen to Binaca Geetmala. We could hear songs drifting in from staff quarters. At that time, Jhumri Telaiya was part of Hazaribag district,” he said.

Retired Merchant Navy officer Capt Arun Kumar Singh, who studied in the school between 1970 and 1977, said access to radio was restricted but not impossible.

“We were not allowed to keep personal radio sets and had no direct access to them. The student assigned to read the news for the school assembly would go to the House Master’s residence, where teachers generously allowed us to use their radio sets. Apart from listening to the news, we made full use of the opportunity to hear Binaca Geetmala,” he added.

“There used to be a radio in the mess. We would run from class just before the programme began. That joy is etched in my memory,” he added.

Binaca Geetmala was broadcast on Radio Ceylon from 1952 to 1988 before moving to All India Radio’s Vividh Bharati in 1989, where it continued till 1994.

For nearly four decades, millions across India tuned in to hear Ameen Sayani’s iconic voice, and more often than not, the next request came from Jhumri Telaiya.