[Mellinam] iPaatti Live on Radio Mirchi

An interesting day today. To think I was hesitating to do this, seems very ironic now! Last night, I had serious qualms about making it to Radio Mirchi for a show on iPaatti. Decided to sleep over it. Woke up this morning with the quote I read somewhere " Never say no to any experience unless you are sure you have nothing to learn from it". Glad my weird mind comes up with the right advice at the right times. This turned out to be an experience that I had so much to learn from.

From November 2009

To first elaborate on iPaatti's connection with Mirchi, we randomly made a call to them, a few months back when we were working on getting the blurbs from different organizations and people. It must be mentioned that all we had in hand at that time, were the lyrics, the music and some illustrations. All in distinct pieces. We tried our luck at many quarters. Some refused to hear us. But surprisingly, many people welcomed us with no idea about our product/background. They gave the most precious thing of all -their time! This long prelude is just to say Radio Mirchi was one of the latter. They(Hari and Batool) looked at our presentation, heard the songs and gave us a glowing blurb. In addition, they promised to get in touch with us once our product was released. To their credit, they kept their word and invited us to their studio and their world.

Madhan had initially told me that it was recording and they would do this show on Children's day but on arriving in the studios, Ajai( the non-stop talker of 'Hello Chennai' fame) and Maria (the show producer) enlightened us that it would be a live show with callers, et al. "Ah! the plot thickens", I thought! Nevertheless, it turned out to be a highly positive event.

From November 2009

From the very moment of entering the studios, the warmth and energy of the team was tangible. They made us feel completely at home and as he was going through, Ajai talked about how he does various segments of the show. A talk show is not just 'non-stop' gab, we discovered. Ajai brings an enormous amount of info - market readings for the day, the immensely useful traffic update for chennai's messy roads.. not to mention the various creative & spontaneous ways of bringing to light the day's special. I was amazed to see the vast amount of parallel processing that goes into the show..handle the calls, get the updates, punch these into the right slot, play music, wake up to tell the time in the studio! Experts that they are, Ajay and Maria seamlessly performed the various tasks and made it appear so simple.

We had the opportunity of talking about the ideals behind iPaatti, the conception process and even read our favorite songs from the book. The best part of it all was talking to some callers who pepped up the show with the rendition of their favorite nursery rhymes.."Old McDonald's Eeyah Eeyah o", "Dosai amma dosai", etc. It was so uplifting to see the child alive in these adults we spoke to.

From November 2009

All in All, we came back with new friends and an enriching experience!

[Mellinam] Meeting Ma. Se

Mission: To collect comments to feature on the back cover of iPaatti, Mellinam's first product. The catch, the book was in production and all we had in hand were the art samples, the music and a presentation we put together on the same. I was skeptical that anyone would talk to us but nevertheless, we approached more than a dozen personalities. Discovered pleasant surprises along the way.

To talk about the artwork, we felt the right person was Maniam Selvan, popularly known as Ma. Se. We both were admirers of his work and felt his words would mean a lot to the product. Madhan called Ma. Se, mentioning that we were calling from Mellinam and would he favor us with an appointment. We were very doubtful to be able to get that. But Ma. Se told us to come over the very next day with our illustrations.

We took a sample of 10 songs with illustrations along with our presentation. The busy, illustrious artist spent not a few minutes but 2 whole hours listening to our project and commenting on its various phases. He guided us on minute artistic details and brought our attention to specifics that we might have otherwise missed. At the end of our long discussion, he asked us to leave the samples with him, saying that he would get back with his comments in a few days.

During the next visit, he gave us the promised comment and something in words that we value very much. Here are the excerpts of that conversation:

"Actually,there's a little more to that note of comments. Last night, I was showing these samples and reading out the songs to my granddaughter."

"She was pointing to each sample and asking curious questions, 'Thaatha, what are these children doing? Is the little girl eating chocolate ice-cream? Is the lady tearing the calendar sheet like amma?! ' and so on, as little children are apt to."

"I read the song on Gandhi Thaatha, in which little boy talks to the Mahatma about his problems and asks 'Tell me what should I do!' . As you've written, the last problem is that the mother is not at home and what should he do about brushing his teeth! To which the great man laughingly replies,
'You'd better learn to brush your teeth,
Or else, start practicing my toothless smile!'
My granddaughter listened to this song and soon after went to bed"

"Next morning, my wife woke her up and took her to brush the teeth, as she/ my daughter have been doing this far. She grabbed the toothbrush from her grandmom and said 'Thaatha told a story yesterday. From now on, I will brush my teeth myself' and ran off. "

"That is your little success story", he finished, leaving us in deep smiles.

Mellinam has taught me so many things in the past year. This, particularly was an eye-opening experience in that I discovered that there is so much innate goodness in people. They surprise us with their kindness and open hearts. They show interest in things that is of no material use to them. Encourage the buds to bloom with confidence. Kudos to the warmth of human nature!