Radio ga ga

Rachana Dubey meets the peppy RJs on the air waves

They are the traffic jam companions. Nattering away on a wide array of radio stations, they snap out music, agony advice, weather forecasts. In sum, they make life just a little bit easier in those bumper-to-bumper bottlenecks.

FM radio, which started on August 15, 13 years ago, has hit boom time, what with new channels hitting the airwaves or about to in the city. And of course, air waves have already spawned quite a few stars who are heard, not seen. Yet they get stacks of fan mail and adulation.

To keep their identity under wraps – after all, crank callers are dime a dozen nowadays – some of them don’t reveal their identities. Others like a popular Hindi-speaking, sing-song jockey develop super-starry ways, refusing to speak to the media because “I don’t have a minute to breathe... in any case I want to be left alone.”

Mercifully, others are less Garboesque, peppy, young (ranging from 24 to 30) and to an extent, even self deprecating. Take Hrishikesh Kannan (Worldspace Satellite Radio and Radio One 92.5 FM) who states that radio jockeying is his trip, never mind the “crazy working hours, no holidays, I’m at my job 365 days and not counting.”

Kannan was into theatre and giving voice-overs for commercial jingles. The radio job turned out to be his place in the sun. Similarly Malishka (93.5 Red FM) was into advertising but on feeling unchallenged, participated in RJ hunts, was selected for Rediff radio on internet and moved to her current job.

RJ Harsh (Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM), like most of his colleagues is on the air, for nearly four hours non-stop and without a pre-written script. The best part of his job he feels is “pulling my interviewee’s legs..and that includes Asha Bhosle’s and Mallika Sherawat’s.”

Malishka also goes without a script, stating, “Reading someone else’s lines from a tele-prompter makes no sense to me. I’d rather give my own spontaneous impressions of the day’s headlines and events. Before going on air, I just make some quick notes.”

Suddenly, at least a dozen institutions in the city are offering coaching in radio jockeying. But Harsh says, “Some of these coaching classes have called me to lecture students. But I think our talent is inborn..and if anyone wants to aspire to rj’ing, he or she should learn on the job as an intern and not hear out some boring lectures.”

According to Kannan to be an rj is to be conversational, warm and clued into the events of the city and the world. “Yes, but there’s a problem,” he concedes.” Like it or not, originality of content is missing. Each one of us rj’s sounds so much like the other. And we end up saying the same kind of thing and playing the same kind of music.”

Ask Kannan, Harsh and Malishka if their pay packet is cushy and all of them say it’s not bad, starting at Rs 15,000. And then? To that, Harsh laughs, “What are you from the income tax department? No just kidding, we are paid quite well, thank you very much.”

d_rachana@dnaindia.net