You’re listening to RJ Danny!

The other day, on a quiet afternoon, I was wondering how to pass time. I wasn’t feeling like reading, it was too hot to go out and too odd an hour to call anyone. Suddenly I remembered that I used to listen to the radio back in Bangalore and had totally lost that habit here in Goa. I plugged in my headphones and began searching for stations. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good signal for any of the radio stations. Even though I hadn’t listened to radio for over two months, I felt I was missing something.

In Bangalore, I normally listened to the radio while cooking or while travelling by bus, neither of which I do in Goa. Radio Indigo was one of my favourite stations as it was fully in English. The RJs sounded sophisticated and cool! And the other station I used to listen to was Radio One. They played Hindi songs all day long. But the RJs spoke Kannada. But then their Kannada was more like English interspersed with the word ‘maadi’ at regular interval. Some of their RJs like Anjaan were cool, but this female called Pallavi was a pain in the neck! She used to talk endlessly in her high pitched voice.

There are various things that make up a radio show. Most of the time is taken up by songs. Then they have games which one way or the other revolved around asking some GK questions. And in this age of Google, I am not quite sure what the aim of this exercise is. Then there is the part wherein people ask for certain songs to be played. Now if you want to listen to some song why not play it yourself on your cell or PC? And when asked to ‘dedicate’ the song, people usually say ‘you’ as in to the RJ, and sometimes end up dedicating love songs to siblings and grandparents too!

Then there are commercials which sometimes can be quite creative as the whole idea has to be conveyed without visuals. My favourite ad was the tata indicom one which goes like one mother asks her son sound of dog, and he promptly replies bow wow, then cat and he says meow meow. Then she says mouse, and he replies click click. Then the narrator used to say something in Kannada which I guess meant that with tata indicom, all kids will be computer saavy. There were also some sad jokes which acted as fillers. My personal favourite was the one with Rajni Kanth travelling in a boat. Once Rajni Kanth was travelling in a boat and suddenly people noticed water was entering into the boat through a hole in the bottom. Everyone panicked and asked Rajni to do something. So Rajni made another hole in the bottom and wrote ‘in’ near the first hole and ‘out’ near the second one! Another type of filler consisted of various celebrities saying this is so and so and you are listening to radio so and so. Once they had Robin Uttappa say that. Who the hell recognises Robin Uttappa’s voice? Unless Himesh comes and says ooooooonn hoooozzoooor, it could be anyone from the street! And why should they tell me that I am listening to so and so radio station?

All said and done, the radio is a great tool to get the feel of the city. You get information on everything right from the weather to latest events, offers and even updates on traffic jams. So then, go ahead and tune in to your favourite radio station! This is RJ Danny signing off, catch me same place, same time, next week! Bbye..