The "Voice of Sandalbar" was no longer a novelty. It was becoming a habit.
In fifty villages, evenings were beginning to organize themselves around a wooden box—around a time, a schedule, and a voice that arrived reliably. That reliability was doing something old Punjab rarely offered: it was reducing uncertainty.
And once uncertainty reduced, people had space to learn.
On the third night, Abdullah Shafi introduced a new segment.
"Kissan Bethak," he announced. "The Farmers' Sitting."
In the studio, Ahmed Khan sat before the microphone and rolled up his sleeves—not for show, but with the instinct of a man who treated agriculture like a disciplined craft. His tone was calm, authoritative, and free of theatrics.
"Brothers," Ahmed began, "for generations we have thrown seed onto the earth the way we throw grain to chickens. We waste half the sack, and the birds eat the rest."
Balvinder leaned in immediately, playing his role as the stubborn, skeptical farmer.
"But Munshi-ji," he protested loudly, "that is how my grandfather planted. Are you saying my grandfather was wrong?"
Ahmed didn't laugh, didn't insult, didn't challenge the man's pride. He answered the way Jinnah trained them to answer: by shifting the argument from ego to method.
"I am saying your grandfather did not have the drill," Ahmed replied smoothly. "Think of the new seed drill like a comb for the earth. It puts the seed deep, in a straight line, right where the moisture hides. You use half the seed, and you get double the crop. It is not magic. It is mathematics."
Across the villages, men nodded around the receivers. They respected Ahmed. He was not a visiting officer. He was not a speechmaker. He was the man who had fought the bollworm and saved the cotton when everyone else was blaming fate.
If Ahmed said, "Use the drill," people would at least try.
That was the new form of authority Sandalbar was building: competence that could be verified.
1) The Pilgrimage of Karam Din
But the real drama of Sandalbar was not always happening on air.
Early that morning, a supply truck from Lalianwala rumbled through the estate gates. It arrived coated in dust, as if the road itself had tried to stop it.
Sitting in the back was Karam Din—pale, hollow-eyed, clutching his stomach like he was holding an ember that refused to die. Beside him sat his terrified young son, too quiet, too alert, the way children become when they have seen adults fail them too many times.
They were ushered into the renovated clinic—not into a tent, not into a dark room that smelled of old cloth and stale fear.
The floor smelled of lime. The walls were whitewashed. Everything looked too clean to be real.
And then Karam Din saw her.
Dr. Evelyn Cartwright.
To him—who had known only local hakims and village remedies—she was an alarming sight: a tall white woman in a crisp coat, wearing a stethoscope like an ornament from another civilization.
Mary D'Souza stepped in before Karam Din could shrink back into himself.
"Drink," she ordered, placing a glass into his hands—clear water mixed with rehydration salts.
Karam Din drank cautiously. He expected bitterness. He expected punishment.
It tasted… clean.
Evelyn examined him with brisk efficiency. No dramatic expressions, no ritual. Only observation, questions, and certainty.
"Amoebic dysentery," she murmured to Mary. "And the boy has worms. Standard treatment. Emetine for the father. Santonin for the boy."
Then she did something that changed Karam Din's understanding of medicine forever.
She didn't only hand him pills.
She gave him a bed.
A real bed in an observation unit—clean, airy, charpoys covered with fresh white sheets that looked almost sinful in their purity.
By evening, the cramps that had tormented Karam Din for two years began to loosen. The fire in his belly—his private, humiliating war—started to die down.
He sat up slowly, looked at his sleeping son, and wept.
Not from pain.
From relief.
Because for the first time in years, something inside him had stopped burning.
News traveled quickly.
By sunset, the road to the estate was dusty with foot traffic. Women carrying sick babies. Elders with clouded eyes. Fathers leading limping sons. They were all coming.
Yesterday, they feared the "white doctor."
Today, the radio had told them she was safe—and the radio was beginning to outrank rumor.
2) The Night Show
That night, the studio atmosphere was different.
Not relaxed—electric.
Jinnah had suggested a move that many administrators would have called reckless: bring the people of the clinic into the broadcast. Not as statistics. As witnesses.
Sohni's father played a soft, hopeful melody on the chimta as Abdullah introduced the guests.
"Tonight," Abdullah said, "we have guests from the clinic. Two young girls from Chak 42, whose grandmother is being treated for a chest infection. Welcome, Bano and Zareena."
The girls—barely twelve—sat huddled near the microphone, eyes wide, shoulders tense with excitement and fear. The studio, to them, felt like a courtroom mixed with a festival.
Abdullah's tone softened.
"Tell us," he asked gently, "how is the hospital? Is it scary?"
Bano shook her head violently, as if scared the microphone might misunderstand her.
"No, Maulvi Sahib! It is like a palace! The sheets are white like clouds! And there is a machine in the ceiling that spins and makes wind!"
Abdullah smiled, letting the innocence do its work.
"And the staff?" he prompted.
Zareena leaned in, breathless.
"There is a Sikh guard at the door," she said. "He is huge! He is a giant! He lifted a charpoy with one hand!"
In the studio, Balvinder puffed out his chest, grinning like a man whose reputation had just been written into folk mythology.
"And the Doctor-ni…" Zareena continued, dropping her voice as if sharing a secret the heavens might punish. "She is not human, Maulvi Sahib. She has hair like gold and eyes like the sky. She touches the sick, and they stop crying. She is an Angel. A Hoori."
Evelyn turned bright red.
She buried her face in her hands, shaking her head in quiet horror.
Balvinder roared into the microphone, delighted.
"An angel! You hear that, folks? We have a giant and an angel! Sandalbar is truly a magical land!"
The girls giggled, then sent messages into the microphone for their grandmother—simple blessings, childish and sincere. The kind of sincerity that doesn't sound like propaganda because it isn't trying to impress anyone.
The segment ended, but something had shifted.
The clinic was no longer "the estate's clinic."
It was now part of the villages' story.
3) The Prophecy
When the "On Air" light died, Balvinder leaned back, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
"Doctor Evelyn," he said, slapping his knee. "You are in trouble."
"I am a doctor," Evelyn snapped, though her smile betrayed her. "Not a celestial being. That was embarrassing."
Balvinder wagged a finger as if delivering battlefield intelligence.
"You do not understand Punjabi men, Doctor. Tonight, you were called a Hoori on the radio. Do you know what that means?"
Evelyn exhaled sharply. "It means they are grateful."
"It means," Balvinder corrected, enjoying himself, "that tomorrow you will not have patients."
He paused, letting the sentence hang.
"You will have admirers."
He glanced at Abdullah. "Maulvi Sahib, prepare the stick. The romance of the Romeo is about to hit the gate."
Abdullah's expression turned weary, like a man who had studied human nature too long to be surprised.
4) The Invasion of the Romantics
Balvinder's prophecy came true at dawn.
At seven in the morning, Mary D'Souza opened the clinic's main gate—and froze.
Usually, the line outside consisted of the sick, the elderly, and the desperate.
Today, the front row was something else entirely.
About fifty young men.
They looked… healthy. Offensively healthy.
They wore freshly starched kurtas. Their hair was oiled and combed with absurd seriousness. Some held flowers plucked from the roadside. One boy stood proudly with a very confused goat, as if livestock could be a love letter.
They craned their necks, trying to see past Mary.
"Where is the angel?" one asked dreamily. "I have a… pain in my heart."
"My eyes!" another shouted. "I cannot see anything but her!"
Mary stared at them without blinking.
She looked at the flowers.
She looked at the goat.
Then she turned her head slowly toward Balvinder, who was standing guard a few steps away, shaking with silent laughter.
"Havildar," Mary said, her voice turning into ice.
"Yes, Sister?"
"Remove this rubbish."
Balvinder stepped forward, suddenly all authority. The "giant" had arrived.
"Oye! Romeos!" he bellowed. "This is a hospital, not a cinema!"
He pointed down the road.
"If you are sick, stand properly. If you are not sick, go home before I assign you to carry bricks for the stronghold!"
A few laughed nervously, but Mary's expression did not move.
Balvinder leaned closer, voice dropping into warning.
"And listen carefully—if you waste the doctor's time, you are stealing medicine from someone who truly needs it. That is not romance. That is shame."
That line hit harder than threats.
The young men began backing away, suddenly remembering that a crowd looks foolish the moment discipline appears.
They scattered down the road in embarrassed clumps—flowers left behind, goat dragged away—leaving the truly sick to step forward again, relieved and grateful that order had been restored.
From the balcony above, Jinnah watched the entire scene with an expression that was almost—almost—amused.
"It seems," he noted to Ahmed, "that stardom has its complications."
Ahmed allowed himself a small smile.
"Indeed, Sir," he replied. "But at least they are listening."
And that was the real point.
The radio had not only carried jokes and music.
It had carried legitimacy.
It had turned a clinic into a symbol, a doctor into a story, and discipline into something the crowd could recognize—before it became something the crowd resented.
Sandalbar was learning faster than the villages.
But the villages, for the first time, were learning too.