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Ham strung: This is VU2ZRS, there is an emergency

For the estimated 5lakh people who will descend on Girgaum Chowpatty on Wednesday, the 30 ham radio operators of Mumbai Amateur Radio Society (MARS) will serve as silent guardian angels.

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Ham strung: This is VU2ZRS, there is an emergency
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For the estimated 5lakh people who will descend on Girgaum Chowpatty on Wednesday, the 30 ham radio operators of Mumbai Amateur Radio Society (MARS) will serve as silent guardian angels. Their job — to keep an eye out for potential violent outbreaks, freak accidents and missing children, the three most likely casualities during Visarjan celebrations at the beach every year.

A quirky set of hobbyists who refer to each other by their official call signs and often show a marked preference for Q code over English, these ham operators or hams work alongside the BMC, police, lifeguards and the Indian Navy on Visarjan day every year.

VU2ZRS aka Zyrous Zend, founder member of MARS and core group organiser explains, “Apart from the police, ham radio operators are the only other people licensed to use radio frequencies to communicate. But the police are there purely for law and order purposes, such as crowd control, stealing and eve-teasing incidents.” This is where the hams come in, using their frequencies to set up an alternate system of communication to aid and speed up rescue operations as well as track missing persons who get lost in the mind-boggling crowds every year.

Of course, speed is a relative term during the peak of immersions at Girgaum Chowpatty. To put things in perspective, the otherwise 20-minute walk from CP Tank to Girgaum Chowpatty takes four to five hours when Lalbaugcha Raja is making his way into the waters. But hams like VU2IVV aka Jayesh Banatwala, who is the group leader this year, love a tough challenge. Last year at CP Tank, two mandals came to the brink of a fight, but the crisis was successfully averted. “We conveyed the information to the control room and 20 cops were immediately deployed to the scene,” says Banatwala.

To those visiting Girgaum Chowpatty , Zend says, “If you spot us, come and say hello and you can see what we do.”

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