Sounds Like Radio Episode 16
Arya was Mr and Mrs Chopra’s oldest daughter.
Cesca had met her on a couple of occasions around the time of the opening of Sounds Like Radio.
“Come in!” Arya said when she answered the door. “It’s great to see you!”
Arya’s children, a boy and a girl, had more than doubled in size since Cesca had last seen them.
The little girl fled when she saw a visitor had arrived.
“She’s ten, a funny age,” Arya said. “Paavan here is six, going on forty-four.”
Paavan was a solemn little boy who wore a polo shirt buttoned up to the top and square specs.
While Arya made tea, Cesca tried to chat to him.
“Do you play video games?” she asked, immediately spotting that he was too young. “Or watch telly?”
He was silent, looking steadily at her with his hands behind his back.
Arya came in with a tray.
“He’s more of a listener,” she said. “Have you heard from my dad recently?
“When I call and he answers I get the classic response – ‘I’ll fetch your mother’. It cracks me up.”
“He hasn’t called,” Cesca said, which was true: she had called him.
The child observed her as she sipped her tea. Then he trotted into the kitchen and turned a radio on.
A political show filtered into the sitting-room.
“He’ll listen to anything,” Arya said.
It gave Cesca an idea.
“Paavan, how would you like to look round the radio studios one day?” she called through.
His small, round face appeared in the doorway and his dark eyes shone.
“I think you’ve got a customer.” Arya smiled.
“Paavan is a real tinkerer. He loves making things and he’s for ever resetting all the buttons on my digital radio!”
Cesca felt bad for buttering up Mr Chopra’s family, but she also felt that sometimes the end justified the means.
There was a tiny hope that if Mrs Chopra heard about her interaction with Paavan, positive vibes might reach the Big Man himself.
There were plenty of examples of a person keeping a failing business going for sentimental reasons.