Hyderabad’s Mahboob Radio: South India’s only radio sales and service centre

This Independence Day, Unboxed travels across the nation to rediscover how we entertained ourselves, captured memories, and kept time. Today, we travel to Hyderabad’s Mahboob Radio.

Tucked away in the tangle of by-lanes that are a common fixture of Old Hyderabad’s Chatta Bazar, in a shop that’s easy to miss, a man of indiscernible age in an old safari suit is hunched over an electrical circuit.

In a world where global workforce across sectors lives in constant fear of losing jobs to artificial intelligence, Mohammed Moinuddin, the safari-suited man, dwells in the knowledge that his will be taken by something more elemental: time itself.

Mohammed Moinuddin repairs radio sets.

His store is nondescript in a manner that stores in old cities tend to be, in need of fresh paint and easily lost among other businesses, parked bikes, and ageing signages. Until you walk past it and do a double take, only to witness a sight that’s as unusual as it is unique: mountains of old radio sets piled on top of each other, resting against every available square inch of wall space. The familiar fading signage announces its presence: Mahboob Radio.

Moinuddin has been running the show here for a little over 27 years, a relatively short span in the 96-year history of the business. “Of course, we weren’t in Chatta Bazar then,” he says in Dakhini, the local language of Hyderabad from which Urdu was derived.

Mahboob Radio, named after Moinuddin’s father, Mohammed Mahboob, started in 1928 in Dabeerpura before it moved to its current location in ’48. Moinuddin took over the business relatively recently, in 1997 after his older brother passed away.

The family’s foray into the radio business happened quite by chance. “My father would travel frequently to Bombay for work,” Moinuddin recollects. Back then, Mahboob dealt in water pipes because domestic taps were beginning to become common in Hyderabad. His trips to Mumbai were to procure said pipes because the city of Hyderabad didn’t have any dealers! During one such trip, he decided to bring home a radio set.

“It was a novelty back then. So much so that our neighbours would come over just to listen to it!” Moinuddin says. The curiosity led some of the well-heeled friends to ask Mahboob to source one for them too on his next trip to Bombay.

Soon, what began as a courtesy for his friends, became a full-fledged business. The transition from a pipe supplier to a radio store owner was complete when he learnt how to repair the sets.

Mahboob Radio has been in the same location for almost as long as India has been free. And in this time, it has been a silent witness to history. Moinuddin recollects listening to Jawaharlal Nehru’s and Mahatma Gandhi’s speeches on his radio set, hearing about the Partition, and news about wars and movie stars.

“Radio was the only source of information and entertainment,” Moinuddin says, “Local community halls would have radio sets where people would gather to listen to the news or movie songs.”

The business also made the family something of a local celebrity. “When we would turn on the radio, people would crowd outside the shop,” Moinuddin says. “They would get food and pass it around. Every day would be something of a celebration!

The road on which Mahboob Radio stands was much narrower. “Even a single car would take over the entire breadth of the street. Usually, it would be a King Kothi car,” he says referring to the birthplace and the official residence of the seventh Nizam, Sir Mir Osman Ali Khan.

It’s no surprise that Mir Osman was one of the Mahboob Radio’s customers, perhaps its most illustrious one. Moinuddin recollects, “We never saw him; his staff would arrive at the store every once in a while, with a radio set for repair and leave us a generous fee.”

Not all the nawabs (the city had many) were good paymasters. “We couldn’t have dreamt of asking them for a fee. So, we merely took what was given to us,” he says. Sometimes it was a measly Rs 20!

The business itself has come a long way since then. Today, radio sales and repairing services are so rare, people are willing to pay significant amounts. And Moinuddin’s clientele spans continents – from US to Russia, and China to Australia. However, radio sets are becoming rarer still and the ones who do come are probably among the last of the generation willing to spend to preserve a device from a bygone era.

Still, that is a niche market. It’s brought celebrities and movie stars to their doorstep. “Someone from Ramoji Rao Film City bought 11 radio sets,” he says, “People are interested in vintage radios. (The movie star) Ajith Kumar came down to get his radio repaired. He was sitting right here.”

In another time, it was Meena Kumari who perched herself on a stool in the shop while she waited for her radio to be repaired.

“It was mobile phones killed the business,” Moinuddin says pointing out it wasn’t so much the TV. “Today, everyone is on their phones!”

Moinuddin himself doesn’t own a smartphone. He continues to rely on his land line. When potential customers and curious culture spotters are unable to find him despite Google Maps, Moinuddin directs them old school stye: Around the corner from City Civil Court, this way from Old Commissioner’s Office…

“Mobile phones can do a lot of things that radio can’t. But you know, when there’s no signal, they’re useless,” he chuckles. “And good luck trying to repair and use a mobile phone that’s a few years old, let alone one that’s older than that!”

In some ways, radio was Moinuddin’s destiny. Like most of his generation, young Moinuddin fell in love with the movie songs that played at the time. “I used to enjoy songs from (the Nargis Dutt-Raj Kapoor movie) Barsaat,” he says. But that was the extent to which the radio set interested him. “I was a car mechanic. I never thought I would run this shop. My father insisted I learn the radio repairing and that’s when I got interested.”

Moinuddin sees himself as the last of his kind. He says, “Earlier there were radio repair institutes. Young people would enrol to learn the trade. Now, no one cares.”

In the store, surrounded by dozens of radio sets, some rare others rarer still. When he goes home, though, it is to a unique 1893 Radio Corporation of America (RCA) set. It occupies a place of pride in his 400-year-old family home. You picture him turning the knobs to his favourite station and then proceeding to his favourite reclining chair as the music crackles out of the speakers.

But Mohammed Moinuddin does no such thing.

This seller of antique radio sets, master mechanic to the Nizams and movie stars, this merchant of nostalgia, refuses to play the radio at home. He shrugs: “That’s just work.”

Mahboob Radio Service, Chatta Bazar Rd, Nassir Complex, Chatta Bazar, Darulshifa, Hyderabad, Telangana 500024