My new love - Podcasting

 

I've always been on the lookout for new opportunities to stay connected with life and people ... and in a lighter vein, finding new things to do to make my days fun and on a continuous journey of learning, I hit upon my new love - podcasting.

A fairly new concept in our country, podcasting, previously known as audio blogging, dates back to the 1980s but with the coming of age of the broadband access it caught on big time in the late 2004s. Wikipedia says that MTV video jockey Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer are credited with this innovation. Adam Curry wrote a program and thereon developers improved upon his idea and podcasting was officially born. US is currently the most advanced podcast market and though podcasting in India is at a very nascent stage at present, it is catching up.

Connecting with people especially those achieving new boundaries has always fascinated me and besides I really do love to talk. So when friend,  spoke to me about his podcast, I was fascinated. I troubled him until he taught me the ropes . I googled and read a lot of articles and tips and so on about podcasting (very important to do so) and when I felt confident that I could, took it a step forward, started my podcast: crossleggedwithhiramehta. Icing on the cake, I got encouraged to record my podcasts at a dear friend's studio. Not wanting to record unprepared and with no proper script and clear thoughts, I wrote out 10 episodes and was on my way with, "Hi, I am Hira Mehta and welcome to an intro to my podcast crossleggedwithhiramehta, where I will be talking to you about anything and everything that life throws at us.... There is nothing in life like second innings, second chances or second childhood.. It's just this one life... Live this one life in the 'now' with me..." and ending the podcast with a "Namaste" ....and why not!!! Let everyone know that there is a chatterbox out there from India too !!!

It is another thing that I would really love to edit the episodes to add more thoughts/ insights and that always happens. You always feel you can better your work in the hind sight, so I lived with these 10 episodes and began to better them from the 11th one onwards. My podcasts touch upon life topics such as .....friendships and whatever does the word friendship even mean...... saying no without the guilt...... death and having anxious thoughts about it..... tolerance vs intolerance..... internet woes and mobile addiction... health and exercise, my way... decoding laughter.... why fairy tales no more...an interview of dementia also short film making, and so on. The podcasts share my thoughts on the subjects and a few thoughts on tackling it too. Each episode is a maximum of 10 minutes each... and that is not too long, right? I definitely don't want the listener to have to listen to me droning endlessly in their ears.

Things are not the same anymore, right from the way we interact with each other on social media, treat the environment, even polluting the air we breathe. As individuals there is just that much that we can do to make huge differences in society and surroundings so it is a good idea to perhaps start with ourselves first. Often we think, this seems to only happen to me or why me? so in my podcasts, I talk about these little troublesome things because I am just human as you are. I do believe that if we together can make our own lives better and breathe easy, it will be enough to take on the bigger issues. Podcasting for me is sharing gyaan in a positive, inspirational and with a touch of my own experiences and humour, my way!!! Even if one listener get inspired listening to me then I am happy sharing for sure. Besides it has connected me to a wonderful group of podcasters on the Facebook page and I am learning so much more from them. It offers me an opportunity to connect to more people all over the world in the podcasting scenario, just like social media, and hopefully to more listeners in the near future. Today I have already 23 episodes up and going.

So tune in every Monday after 9 pm to crossleggedwithhiramehta on anchor.fm/hira-mehta, headfone.co.in, Apple.com, Google.com, Breaker.audio, Radiopublic.com where I will continue to talk about you, me and anything and everything life throws at us.....  I believe there is always a scope for improvement and so if you listen in then do comment too to help me better myself...if you have a topic you want discussed,  write in to me .... and yes, till we meet again - Namaste !!!