Mahatma Gandhi at a public meeting in western India in 1944
In 1929, a young volunteer of the Indian National Congress party had a moment of epiphany.
Nanik Motwane was watching the venerated national hero Mahatma Gandhi struggling to get himself heard at huge pro-Independence public meetings. The leader would be "going from platform to platform" at the same venue to "enable his weak voice to be heard by large numbers [of people]," Motwane recounted later.
That's when the 27-year-old second-generation migrant businessman decided to find a way to "amplify the voice" of the leader so that "all who were anxious, more to hear than to see him, would be able to hear him clearly".
Two years later, Motwane was ready with a public address system at the Congress party's session in Karachi - which is now a bustling city in present-day Pakistan. One of his earliest surviving photographs shows the beaming businessman wearing the trademark white Gandhi cap and showing the leader the branding on his microphone: Chicago Radio.
Nanik Motwane showing Gandhi his microphone during a meeting in Karachi in 1929
Chicago Radio was a curious name for a firm based in Bombay (now Mumbai), where the Motwanes had migrated to in 1919. As Kiran Motwane tells the story, his father borrowed the name of a Chicago-based radio maker which was folding up and with "due permission". One reason for the fascination with a foreign name could have to do with the fact that Motwanes belonged to a thriving, globally networked community.
In the beginning, Nanik Motwane imported loudspeakers, amplifiers and microphones - the basic components of a public address system - from the UK and the US. Then his team of five engineers ripped them open and reverse-engineered them for local use.
Even as his siblings helped in the business, Nanik Motwane would travel to party meetings by trains and trucks, carrying his PA systems. Volunteers and local police provided security on precarious road journeys. On reaching the meeting venue - usually a dusty local ground - a day ahead of the meeting, he would set up and test the system to make sure there were enough batteries to power them. He would then tie the horn-shaped loudspeakers on bamboo poles and spread them across the ground to make sure that the sound reached all corners.