Time was when most song requests to the popular radio programme Binaca Geetmala would seem to come from the mysterious but lyrical-sounding town of “Jhumri Telaiya”, leaving the rest of India wondering whether the place really existed or it was all a huge set-up.

Dwarika Ram had no such doubts about Jhumri Telaiya — he is the officer in charge of the police station in the small mica town in Jharkhand’s Koderma district.

But last Tuesday, it was his turn to stare in disbelief at a written request handed to him by a lockdown-hit Jhumri Telaiya resident.

The writer wanted not oxygen or medicines, not even a hospital bed. All she wanted was a pair of new slippers — and Ram’s help in buying them.

“My slippers are torn and I find it very difficult to move around in the house,” Deepa Khatuwala, a businesswoman dealing in mica, wrote in the letter.

She had shoes but needed a pair of slippers or flip-flops for indoor use, she stressed in her letter, which she handed personally to the OC on May 25, requesting he get a footwear store opened for her.

“Not only that, my maid needs an umbrella and many others like my driver need other stuff, and these should be made easily available,” Khatuwala, who appeared to be in her early 40s, told The Telegraph.

The OC “regretted his inability saying he was not competent to open the relevant store during the lockdown”, she said.

An undaunted Khatuwala drove to Koderma town, about 12km away, to meet the sub-divisional officer the same day. She had to leave a letter at the office as the SDO was “away on a field visit”.

Khatuwala then called up ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha politician and former chairperson of the state women’s commission, Mahua Majee, for help.

The letter written to the police by Deepa Khatuwala. Shabbir Hussain

Majee told this newspaper: “It was an unusual request as we are normally approached for hospital beds, medicines and oxygen around this time.”

She said she had nevertheless arranged to send a pair of slippers to Khatuwala.

“Yes, the district president of her party contacted me but I declined their offer as it’s a problem also faced by many others,” Khatuwala said, implying her readiness to put herself in others’ shoes.

She emphasised the public-spiritedness of her act when asked why she hadn’t used an online delivery platform. She said she could do so personally but many others were not proficient with the system and could get their stuff only when the markets opened.

“Some people even said I was not interested in solving my problem and instead wanted to make it an issue,” Khatuwala complained.

Her new slippers will have to wait at least till June 3 when the state government will review the lockdown, in force since April 22, and decided whether to relax or extend it.

Khatuwala’s persistence perhaps carries echoes of the 1950s when, in the heyday of the radio, Jhumri Telaiya residents would send tons of postcards to Radio Ceylon and All India Radio’s Vividh Bharati, requesting them to play their favourite Bollywood songs.

Sometimes almost every song in a particular broadcast would be preceded by the announcement that it had been requested by “Jhumri Telaiya se... so-and-so”.

At the time, many residents of the town — named after the folk dance form Jhumar and the local lake (telaiya) — had suddenly turned rich from mica mining. They lived in mansions and rode Mercs and Porsches in their backward hinterland — as much an incongruity as the little-known town’s dominance over the airwaves.

It was believed that the local tycoons competed with one another to have their names announced on these popular music programmes and paid people to inundate the radio stations with song requests in their names.