Catch the light

If you did not know that Chennai, over the course of its history from 1639, has had 4 lighthouses serving the city. The first was just a flame lit on top of the Exchange House in Fort St George (now the Fort Museum) and the second was atop a Doric column which is now on the premises of the Madras High Court. The third was a grander affair, right on top of the buildings of the Madras High Court itself. The one in use now was commissioned in 1977 and it has another 38 years to go before it beats its predecessor's record of the longest-serving lighthouse of the city. 

You can barely make out the red-and-white structure of the lighthouse in this picture. And it is not usual to get this kind of a view of our lighthouse. This photo was taken from a second-floor window of the All India Radio station in Santhome. 

Do you think they'd get to see the light beam from here?

Mixing sound

The Multi-track Recording Studio at the facilities of Prasar Bharati's Chennai station has seen all the big names that you can think of in the entertainment industry. All of them would have performed here at some point - mostly the entry / early stage of their careers.

A view from the control room that looks out to the stage; artistes and technicians are testing out the state stuff before the audience enters the room!

Not NPR yet, but will get there

I must admit that I'm not a great FM radio person; for one thing, my commutes are too short to bother with finding the right station and settling down to listen to it. For another, most of the channels seem to do pretty much the same thing - Tamizh movie songs - so it is hard to figure out which channel I'm listening to at any time. But a lot of that changed with a phone call on Sunday evening - was most surprised that I was being invited as a guest on a live talk/phone-in show. So surprised in fact, that I didn't even properly register the name of the channel that had invited me!

When I got around to finding out, I learnt that 'Chennai Live 104.8 FM' was trying to break new ground. Launched in July 2008, the channel belongs to the Muthoot Group and has been billed as 'India's first Talk Radio FM station'. I'm not sure about that, but inviting me as a guest is definitely proof of their desire to target the "evolved, intelligent Chennaite" . Therefore one didn't have to think too hard before accepting - I do like the sound of my voice and chances of being kicked out of the studio within the 30 minutes I had been given seemed slim. So there I was at 9.30 on Monday morning, sitting across the table and talking to a couple of very high-enthu people who looked like they'd be bouncing around if not for all the equipment that kept them tethered to the table.

Except for the headphones and having to break the conversation for some ads / filler songs, it was no different from, say, a conference call. Krishna and Bhavana kept the flow going, questioning without being combative and making sure that things didn't get too serious - the talk was about 'New Age Managers' and given the gloom all around, we could have easily become mournful - but the two RJs didn't let that happen. Great work, guys; you can be sure that I'll be tuning into 104.8 more often, now!