The radio studio inside the Canal Bungalow was small, almost modest—one room carved out of a larger house that still smelled of fresh limewash and varnished wood. Crown engineers had done what Crown engineers always did: they made it functional first, elegant second.
Thick velvet curtains were nailed over the windows to kill echo. A heavy teak desk sat in the center like an altar. Above it, a single electric lamp threw a clean circle of light—bright enough to make every face look guilty.
And in the middle of that circle stood the microphone.
Chrome-plated. Western Electric. Smooth as a mirror. It looked less like a tool and more like a relic from a future that Punjab had not been invited to.
The "Voice of Sandalbar" team sat around it, staring as if it might suddenly bite.
Abdullah Shafi—schoolteacher, Sufi scholar from Pakpattan—sat stiff-backed, adjusting his spectacles for the third time in a minute. A man of books. A man who trusted ink because ink could be re-read. This device offered no mercy. Whatever left his mouth would belong to the air.
Balvinder Singh, Sikh Havildar, looked like a caged tiger forced into a drawing room. His knee bounced. His fingers tapped the desk. Twice he leaned forward and poked the microphone grill as if testing whether it was metal or superstition.
From the control booth behind the glass, Chief Engineer D'Souza winced and lifted one hand in warning.
In the far corner, on a low stool near the wall, sat Sohni.
She was barely fifteen. Hindu. A gypsy girl from the river camps. Her entire posture was defensive—knees drawn in, arms wrapped around herself, chin tucked down like a bird in a storm.
Behind her sat her guardians: her father and her uncle. Men who belonged to the open road, not to pucca(bricks) rooms. They sat awkwardly on chairs as if chairs were a foreign custom. Her father held a chimta (musical instrument) in his lap, knuckles pale from gripping it too tight. Her uncle balanced a dholak (small drums), fingers hovering over the skin but not daring to strike.
They had come with her for a reason: not as decoration, not as backup musicians, but as a visible promise to the village world—she was not alone, and she was not unguarded.
The tension in the room was thick enough to cut.
Balvinder, unable to sit inside tension without trying to break it, cracked a joke—something about a buffalo and a bishop—that was so crude Abdullah actually blushed and covered his ears.
"Oye, Havildar," Abdullah whispered, scandalized. "This is a broadcast, not a barracks."
"It's a joke, Maulvi Sahib," Balvinder grinned. "Laughing is good for digestion."
Sohni shrank even further into herself, overwhelmed by the loud voices.
Then the door opened.
Jinnah entered.
The room did not merely fall silent—it corrected itself. Balvinder straightened. Abdullah's hands stopped fidgeting. Even Sohni's father instinctively sat a fraction taller, as if the air had suddenly become official.
Jinnah did not take the head of the table like a zamindar. He pulled a chair and sat in the middle of them, placing himself among the parts of the machine he was building. His gaze moved over the trio—Scholar, Soldier, Singer—and then to the two musicians behind the girl.
"You are nervous," he stated calmly, as if noting the weather.
"Sir," Abdullah admitted, choosing his words carefully, "we are… different. Havildar Balvinder speaks with… great vigor. And the girl is frightened."
Jinnah nodded once, as if this was the most predictable thing in the world.
"That difference is the point," he said. "Our audience is not one person. It is the farmer who understands Balvinder's sweat. It is the elder who listens for Abdullah's meaning. And it is the weary soul who needs music, because advice alone cannot reach him."
He leaned slightly toward Abdullah.
"Abdullah, you are the driver of this vehicle. You keep the road. You keep the words clean. You ensure we do not crash into insult."
He turned to Balvinder.
"Balvinder, you are the engine. You provide energy, force, the sound of life. But an engine without a driver crashes. So when Abdullah signals a turn, you turn."
Balvinder's grin returned, but softer now, disciplined by the room.
"Understood," he said, saluting with two fingers. "I will keep the RPM high, but the brakes ready."
Then Jinnah looked toward Sohni. She did not meet his eyes.
He did not demand attention. He did not perform kindness.
He simply reached out and patted her head—once, gently—like a father correcting fear without humiliating it.
"And you," he said softly, "are the beauty. A vehicle can run without paint, but nobody loves it. Your voice will make the message bearable."
Sohni finally looked up. Her eyes were wide and wary.
"My daughter, Dina, is your age," Jinnah said, lowering his voice as if he was speaking only to her. "She lives far away. I miss her voice. When she comes here, I will introduce you. You may tell her how you made villages listen."
Something changed in Sohni's face—not loud confidence, but a small pride that had permission to exist.
From the control booth, D'Souza paused his calibration and watched. He had seen officers intimidate men. He had rarely seen anyone calm a frightened child without making it a spectacle.
Jinnah stood.
"Now," he said, the warmth vanishing back into discipline, "we do not improvise. We plan. Write the script."
The Filter
For the next hour, the room buzzed with a new kind of energy—structured, focused, productive.
Balvinder pitched jokes. Mostly about bodily functions, mothers-in-law, goats, and the kinds of mistakes men make when nobody is watching.
Abdullah listened, sighed, and rewrote them.
"We cannot say, 'the cow dung hit the fan,' Balvinder," Abdullah said with patience that looked practiced. "We say, 'the situation became complicated.'"
"Boring," Balvinder complained.
"Dignified," Abdullah corrected. "How about: 'When the buffalo refused to move, the farmer learned patience'?"
Balvinder leaned back, defeated in the gentlest way.
"Fine. But I am adding a sound effect."
Sohni giggled—quietly, surprised by her own laughter. Her father glanced at her, relieved, as if laughter itself was proof she would survive this room.
The Call to the Strongholds
Outside, the sun slid down toward the canal line, turning the fields gold and the village lanes long with shadow.
In village squares—Chak 96, Lalianwala, Rattokala, and dozens more—the Farabis began to assemble the receivers.
They did not place them inside private houses. They placed them publicly, deliberately: on high tables, inside the Strongholds—the new brick community posts that had become symbols of safety.
The receivers were large wooden boxes with glowing dials and cloth-covered speakers. To the educated, they looked like machinery. To villagers, they looked like expensive furniture that had accidentally learned to breathe.
Three things happened at once, by design.
First: Farabis and recruited youth moved through lanes making announcements.
Second: drummers began to beat rhythms that sounded less like warning and more like festival.
Third: Sandalbar's supply carts rolled in quietly, carrying tea leaves, jaggery, and small sacks of roasted gram and biscuits.
The Farabis did not announce it as "a lecture." They announced it like a carnival.
A young recruit—one of the station basti boys with a loud voice and a talent for exaggeration—stood on an upturned crate and shouted into the lane:
"Oye! Oye! People of the soil—listen!"
Heads turned. Doors opened.
"Tonight! By the order of the Crown and by the order of Jinnah Sahib! A magic box will speak!"
A ripple moved through the lane. Men emerged with hookahs. Women peered from behind doorways, half curious, half cautious. Children appeared instantly, because children are always the first citizens of curiosity.
The crier pointed dramatically toward the Stronghold.
"Come! Sit! Watch! Hear!"
A Farabi, posted beside the Stronghold door, added in a calm, formal tone:
"The first day, tea and small snacks will be provided by Sandalbar Estate. Bring your families. There will be no pushing. There will be order."
The mention of tea did more than any speech could have done. Tea meant someone had planned. Tea meant this was not a trick meant to humiliate. Tea meant a gathering without fear of hunger.
Even the skeptics came—if only to confirm their skepticism properly.
Men, women, and children poured out, carrying charpoys, stools, woven mats. They settled in concentric circles by instinct: men in front, women behind, children everywhere the adults forgot to control.
Some stared at the receiver like it was an animal.
Some refused to stare, as if staring would invite evil.
An old man squinted at the wooden box and muttered, loudly enough to be heard:
"It is a trick. There is a dwarf inside the box."
His grandson, who had watched D'Souza string wires on the bungalow roof weeks ago, tried to sound educated.
"Shh, Dada. It is bijli. Electricity."
The old man snorted.
"Electricity does not speak. People speak."
Nearby, a woman whispered to another:
"Maybe it is a jinn trapped inside."
Her friend whispered back:
"If it is a jinn, then why is it sitting on a table like a schoolboy?"
A Farabi stood near the receiver, rifle slung, face neutral. He did not argue with superstition. He did not mock it. He simply kept the crowd from touching the dials.
At the tea station, Sandalbar boys poured small cups. The smell of boiling leaves and jaggery drifted through the square like a bribe from heaven.
Curiosity became attendance.
Attendance became silence.
And silence became readiness.