15/04/2020
THE BRAINS BEHIND RADIO KASHMIR DIALGAM
Four miles south from the main town of Islamad, Kashmir, is a village called Dialgam. A mile west of Dialgam is another village, Kamad. There lived a person namely Ghulam Nabi Ahanger. As the last name suggests, he was blacksmith by profession. Ghulam Nabi Ahanger, popularly known as Nab Kamid invented, along with his mechanic friend, Imtiyaz Ahmad of Dialgam, a radio station back in the late 1980s.
They established it on a Chinar tree and named it Radio Kashmir Dialgam. Its range was one thousand meters, and it worked at all frequencies. When the only source of communication was radio, they hacked all the frequencies without a computer or any sophisticated device. It worked for six-seven days before they pulled it down. The reasons being they were tortured by the authorities, and after they were released, Ahmad left his innovative ideas for fear of meeting the same fate. Imtiyaz Ahmad has a shop in dialgam where he offers his services to fix electronic devices, especially TV sets and Radios.
However, Nab Kamid did continue his innovative ideas albeit underground. It is said that in the 1990s he was fixing satellite phones and other devices of rebels. Then some unidentified gunmen forced him to leave his native village for Uranhal. He came back in 2010 only to die three years later at Kamad.
One day Nab Kamid visited Sher Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) where his nephew was admitted. Coincidently, his nephew had to go through some test on the same day. However, the doctors said that the machine was broken down and until the mechanic from Delhi comes to fix it, they won’t be able to do it.
After insistence from Nab Kamid, they agreed to allow him to have a look at it. To their surprise, he fixed it in ten minutes, and his nephew went through the test on the same machine. They offered him a job there. But due to some personal reasons, he left it after three-four months and came back to his village to build an aeroplane. However, due to abject poverty, he couldn’t afford an aluminium frame for it. On his death bed in September 2013, he lamented to his cousin about this unfulfilled dream.