Birth of a blog

2^nd September 2013, Chennai,

Birth of a talk show - Rumble

I’ve had a friend from my school days complain that everything about Chennai on TV was only in Tamil. “Sure I know that the city is located in Tamil Nadu and all that, but everything in Tamil, that’s a bit much!” he said. Another reminded me that I had a reputation of being a severe gas pot in school and asked me why I did not do programs in English myself. Obviously he has no idea that TV is driven by TRP’s but I thought I would give his suggestion a shot. When I did approach a few channels they politely showed me the door. Even The Hindu told me that there was no market for English programming. They had just dumped their own English language TV channel called Hindu Metro.

But then an acquaintance of mine Ravi Menon, pointed out that I could do it over the Internet for free. Ravi felt I could interview people from Chennai and post it on the net and see if it gets a response from netizens. However I did not know how to find a production house that would take care of the shooting and editing, so I forgot all about it.

Fast forward to August 2013.

Ravi the enthusiastic friend of mine (the type people call an ‘enthu cutlet’), has no concept of when to make phone calls to people. He calls whenever the mood gets him. So one night when the phone rang around one thirty in the morning I knew it was him. Much against my instincts I took the call and it was indeed him. He was all excited but then again he gets excited about almost anything. I resigned myself to listening to him blather all night about something that may have caught his fancy. As soon there was a break in his monologue I told him to call me again in the morning, cut the call, put the mobile on ‘silent mode’, placed it in another bedroom then came back to bed. That I thought would be the end of that, but I was obviously wrong. As soon as I reactivated the mobile in the morning it started ringing. It was Ravi again.

I could still sense the alcohol in his voice but he said that he called to tell me that he would speak to me later and cut the call. That is so typically Ravi. In the evening he introduced me to Suresh Menon, owner of a design shop called Sushma Multimedia that is engaged in creating works for just about anybody. He does corporate films, documentaries, designed brochures and had even directed a full-length feature film.

Ravi introduced me to Suresh at his studio located at the foot of the Kodambakkam Bridge. Ravi straightaway launched into his plan of making a talk show with Suresh’s help. On his part, Suresh told me that he had what it takes to produce small shows and that he was willing to try it out. From there things moved at lightning speed. Within the hour things were set up along with the lights, microphones and cameras.  I called my friend Rana Bubber and asked him to come over to the studio. I didn't tell him what it was all about, not that he would have cared anyway. He being an old friend of mine willingly came over after he cleaned up anothert bunch of punters at the Race Course. By now you must have inferred; Rana was a bookie at the Guindy Race Course.

He is a passionate votary of low cost housing and can talk for hours on the subject so we decided to start with that. I had never been in front of a camera except once when I played a five second part in a music video during my Magnasound days. The budget was so small that the director Ken Ghosh asked me to play the part. The song was  ‘Alone now’ by Jasmine Bharucha.

We picked a word from among the lines in the 1976 song by Johnny Wakelin titled ‘In Zaire’. The camera’s rolled and thus was born the program titled ‘Rumble’. You can see them on this link https://www.youtube.com/user/sureshmen