Project Fever

Last week went quite hectic with a mound of project reports to complete. I am still sitting on some of them while a few have seen the light of the day. Nevertheless, projects are a fun part of academic life (read media), one gets to meet interesting people all the time. What’s more, one learns to deal with sundry people, right from the ‘Hey dude, wassup?’ kinds to ‘Sorry, I don’t have much time’ types.

As a part of a Media studies project my friend and I had to visit a few radio stations and ask them some stupid and other not-so-stupid questions. The expedition began with Radio One’s office at Tardeo. We were sitting in the lounge when a tall and fair guy with curls opens the office door for us his chewing gum bubble going off on our face. ‘Yes?’ No… You gotta learn some manners dude! Anyway, this person turned out to be the Creative Head who was going to answer questions for us. For each question I would throw at him, he threw questioning looks back. As if wanting to ask-Is it a valid question? We wrapped it up fast and thanked him for his precious contribution. ‘No probs man…no probs.’ I don’t like people who aren’t Goans and yet address their sentences to ‘men’. They sound so damned sexist. I wouldn’t have liked him anyway.

We moved on to Fever’s studio at Andheri. They sat us in the Board room and after a while, a stout man with scanty hair walked in. My friend and I threw the how-is-he-gonna-treat-us looks at each other. He happened to be the ex. National Creative Director of Fever. We were still skeptical about things when he ordered coffee for us. And trust me, the man loved to talk! Over mugs of coffee, I had to take down endless pages of information he blessed us with. Such an unassuming and down-to-earth character, we were falling in love with Fever. We were also shown around the studio which was a splendid visual delight! Didn’t someone tell us not to judge a book by its cover?

The next studio we visited was of Meow which we had a hard time locating. Then this Creative Head guy sat us in an obscure place which looked more like a store room and turned out to be a bigger jerk than the first one. All our questions seemed to be lost in the rings of smoke he so stylishly and shamelessly blew on our faces. Neither of the two parties could quite stand each other. I suppose there is not much I want to write about him. I would rather talk about the last and a pleasant experience with Aakashwani, the government run radio station. True, they don’t have flamboyant offices and cool dudes but they have a lot to offer. Our visit there was worthwhile and the normal looking people there treated us well. All said and done, I am a little more experienced now !!