[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":171},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-en-nihal-bharathi":3},{"id":4,"title":5,"artistId":6,"birthYear":6,"body":7,"born":6,"description":139,"died":125,"era":140,"extension":141,"heroImage":142,"imageCredit":143,"imageLicense":144,"imageSource":145,"meta":146,"navigation":147,"notable":148,"path":149,"roles":150,"seo":152,"sources":153,"stem":169,"translated":147,"url":156,"__hash__":170},"peopleEn\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fnihal-bharathi.md","Nihal Bharathi",null,{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":130},"minimark",[10,14,19,27,30,34,41,53,57,83,98,102,109,116,120,127],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Somewhere in India in the 1970s, a listener would have written a postcard, addressed it to a radio station in Colombo, and asked for a song. Weeks later a voice would read the name out — unhurried, low, entirely without the announcer's bark that the job usually invites — and play the record. That voice belonged to Nihal Bharathi, and the reason people in Kanpur and Karachi bothered to buy the stamp was that Radio Ceylon, broadcasting on short wave from a small island, was for two decades the most listened-to station in South Asia.",[15,16,18],"h2",{"id":17},"the-name","The name",[11,20,21,22,26],{},"English-language sources, including his own station's paperwork, spell him ",[23,24,25],"strong",{},"Nihal Bhareti",". Sinhala sources write නිහාල් භාරති, which comes back into English as Bharathi. Both refer to the same man; there is no evidence that either spelling is a mistake, and the English press used the first throughout his career.",[11,28,29],{},"Very little of his private life is on the record, and this article does not go looking for it. He was born in Sri Lanka; no source found gives a birth date, and English Wikipedia files him under \"year of birth missing\". What survives is thirty years of programme titles, which for a broadcaster is the real biography.",[15,31,33],{"id":32},"an-apprenticeship-in-the-golden-age","An apprenticeship in the golden age",[11,35,36,37,40],{},"Bharathi joined Radio Ceylon in the 1960s, at the point when the station was at its absolute height — the \"King of the Airwaves\", as it was called, with millions of listeners across the subcontinent tuning in past midnight. He was appointed by ",[23,38,39],{},"Livy Wijemanne",", then Director of the Commercial Service, the division that had turned the station into a commercial and cultural power.",[11,42,43,44,47,48,52],{},"His training came from ",[23,45,46],{},"Vernon Corea",", the announcer the London papers eventually dubbed \"the golden voice of Radio Ceylon\". The Sunday Observer's 2004 profile of Corea names Bharathi, alongside Corea's cousin Vijaya Corea, among the broadcasters he mentored. In the early years Bharathi assisted Corea on programmes such as ",[49,50,51],"em",{},"Take It Or Leave It",", which went out from a Radio Ceylon studio in front of a live audience — an unforgiving place to learn timing. He learned quickly, and the quality everyone afterwards mentions is the same one: a voice that was smooth rather than loud.",[15,54,56],{"id":55},"the-programmes","The programmes",[11,58,59,60,63,64,67,68,67,71,74,75,78,79,82],{},"For a decade — the Sunday Observer's obituary says decades — he presented ",[49,61,62],{},"Radio Journal",", a magazine programme of news, interviews, music and features. The rest of his output was the request-and-choice tradition that made the station famous: ",[49,65,66],{},"Holiday Choice",", ",[49,69,70],{},"Housewives' Choice",[49,72,73],{},"Choice of the People",", and ",[49,76,77],{},"Open Forum",". He also presented a Sri Lankan version of the BBC's ",[49,80,81],{},"Desert Island Discs"," over SLBC's airwaves, in which well-known figures, including politicians, chose the records they would take with them.",[11,84,85,86,89,90,93,94,97],{},"The music he played was not one thing. The Corea family's tribute site records that he played Lynn Anderson's ",[49,87,88],{},"Rose Garden"," on his request programmes, and Radio Ceylon's English Service was also the channel through which Sinhala pop reached the English-speaking middle class — Corea and his cousins had made Clarence Wijewardena and Annesley Malewana household names on exactly this frequency. Bharathi interviewed a long list of Sri Lankan musicians for the station, among them ",[23,91,92],{},"Nimal Mendis"," and ",[23,95,96],{},"Mignonne Fernando"," of the Jetliners.",[15,99,101],{"id":100},"running-the-service-and-never-leaving-the-microphone","Running the service, and never leaving the microphone",[11,103,104,105,108],{},"He rose through the management and became ",[23,106,107],{},"Director of English Services"," of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation in the 1980s — the post from which the whole English output of the national broadcaster was run.",[11,110,111,112,115],{},"Unusually for someone who reaches that level, he did not stop presenting. He compered entertainment events in Colombo and presented on Sri Lankan television, and he was still on air decades later: in 2013 and 2014 he was co-hosting ",[49,113,114],{},"Music We Grew Up With"," on Radio Sri Lanka with Sunil Simon, a nostalgia programme with a following both on the island and among Sri Lankans abroad. When Vernon Corea's daughter visited the SLBC in July 2014, it was Bharathi she was photographed with — still, half a century after he walked in, one of the veterans of the building.",[15,117,119],{"id":118},"death-and-a-page-that-has-not-caught-up","Death, and a page that has not caught up",[11,121,122,123,126],{},"Nihal Bharathi died on ",[23,124,125],{},"13 February 2020",", aged eighty. The Sunday Observer reported it three days later; the burial was at the Mount Lavinia cemetery. Eighty years old in February 2020 places his birth in 1939 or 1940, but no source states the year, so this article does not either.",[11,128,129],{},"Both the English and Sinhala Wikipedia articles still list him among living people, and the Sinhala one still says he \"can be heard on the airwaves\". They have simply not been updated. The obituary is the better record, and it is worth quoting for its plainest sentence, which is also the truest thing anyone wrote about him: \"His voice attracted hundreds of fans in Sri Lanka as well as in the subcontinent.\"",{"title":131,"searchDepth":132,"depth":132,"links":133},"",2,[134,135,136,137,138],{"id":17,"depth":132,"text":18},{"id":32,"depth":132,"text":33},{"id":55,"depth":132,"text":56},{"id":100,"depth":132,"text":101},{"id":118,"depth":132,"text":119},"The soft-voiced Radio Ceylon announcer whose request programmes were heard across the subcontinent, who was trained by Vernon Corea and hired by Livy Wijemanne, and who ended up running the English Service.","1960s-2010s","md","\u002Fimages\u002Fpeople\u002Fnihal-bharathi.webp","Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Asiaradio22","Public domain","https:\u002F\u002Fcommons.wikimedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FFile:Nihalbhareti.jpg",{},true,false,"\u002Fen\u002Fpeople\u002Fnihal-bharathi",[151],"Broadcaster",{"title":5,"description":139},[154,157,160,163,166],{"title":155,"url":156},"Nihal Bhareti — Wikipedia","https:\u002F\u002Fen.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002FNihal_Bhareti",{"title":158,"url":159},"නිහාල් භාරති — සිංහල විකිපීඩියා","https:\u002F\u002Fsi.wikipedia.org\u002Fwiki\u002F%E0%B6%B1%E0%B7%92%E0%B7%84%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%BD%E0%B7%8A_%E0%B6%B7%E0%B7%8F%E0%B6%BB%E0%B6%AD%E0%B7%92",{"title":161,"url":162},"'Nihal Bhareti no more' — Sunday Observer, 16 February 2020","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sundayobserver.lk\u002F2020\u002F02\u002F16\u002Fnews\u002Fnihal-bhareti-no-more",{"title":164,"url":165},"Somapala Perera, 'The golden voice of Radio Ceylon' — Sunday Observer, 18 July 2004","https:\u002F\u002Fweb.archive.org\u002Fweb\u002F20090216183222\u002Fhttp:\u002F\u002Fsundayobserver.lk\u002F2004\u002F07\u002F18\u002Ffea20.html",{"title":167,"url":168},"Nihal Bhareti — Vernon Corea 1927-2002 (tribute site)","https:\u002F\u002Fvernoncorea.wordpress.com\u002Ftag\u002Fnihal-bhareti\u002F","en\u002Fpeople\u002Fnihal-bharathi","WLNweyUQRlpCWucuJACrhV_ROohnZnFdemskAKtY-j4",1787999332876]