September 29, 2013

Participated in a TV Talk show shooting

Dear all,

I received a phone call last week from ‘Pudiya Thalaimurai TV’, a Tamil news channel informing that they were going to launch an entertainment channel by name ‘Pudu Yugam TV’ from 14th Oct’2013 onwards. In this connection, they wanted me to participate in a shooting for a morning talk show in view of ISAD on 22nd Oct which would be telecast on that day. They searched out my name from internet and requested me to name a SLP also for that talk show. I told them that TISA is a SHG and generally not agreeing to the views of SLP.


Then they requested to come along with another person to whom I was comfortable. I told them there was an ex-stammerer (Say X) in your TV office itself whom I had mail contact after reading couple of articles in his Tamil blog. They really surprised and happily agreed with my proposal.
On that shooting day (27th Sep), they asked me to come to their studio at 4.30PM and also requested to avoid wearing green costumes. I went into their studio at the scheduled time. They asked me to sit on a make-up chair (1st time in my life), made a little touch up in my face. There I met Mr.X also and had a brief introduction.

After that we went in to a studio. They informed that this was the biggest TV studio in whole of Asia. It was really a big one with almost 75% of the roof area covered with lights of various angles. Entering into a TV studio was also a first time for me. The entire walls of the studio were painted with green colour and I was told that if I would wear green costumes, then my head only would be seen during TV show. But in such circumstances, they were having different sizes of shirts for wearing it.

Two young anchors one male & one female from Radio one FM were sitting on the chairs for interviewing both of us. The floor manager took almost one hour to adjust lights and camera angles and I learned from them that this was a normal time they usually took for these arrangements.

In that one hour time, we two interacted with the anchors about stammering. The shooting was begun at 6.15 PM and went on till 7 PM. We almost covered all the aspects right from what was stammering, its causes, whether it was heredity, bullying at school, fear of speaking with opposite sex, college life, speech therapy (I avoided commenting on SLP), awareness about stammering, fear of facing interviews, about TISA, SHG meetings, whether stammering was curable, parents & teaches roles etc. We also discussed about how stammerers portraited in a bad taste in Indian movies and how positively they showed in English movies by comparing “ The King’s speech” and “golmal-3”and also about our signature campaign and filed a case in the court. Finally they gave me an envelope with cash as honorarium, but I politely refused it and informed to them that I was very grateful for giving me that opportunity which I was waiting for so long.

All in all it was a wonderful 1st time experience for me! A stammerer participating in a talk show, spoke about stammering and that too going to be telecast on “International Stuttering Awareness Day”. Really an unbelievable but a dream come true one.

All the credits should go to TISA only. My many thanks to the entire TISA family members.


4 comments:

jasbir singh said...

Heartiest congratulations Mr. Manimaran.It would be great if you can kindly bring video clip of the interview for viewing in NC please.

Satyendra said...

Mani- as the new Coordinator, you have already started your innings very WELL, I must say.. Please try and get the link of that program and post it here.. so that we all can see and learn..OR will they give you a recording? If so, we can upload it to youtube or our blog for wider sharing..
Your stand on SLPs is just right and FAIR. We are pursuing SELF-HELP, we are neither against or for other things.. I, as a Community health worker, will certainly desire more peer reviewed and objective OUTCOME studies of the clinical therapies often claimed in private to be "so good" for stammering in various quarters..
Well done! We are proud of you!

Manimaran said...

It is not possible to get video recording before the scheduled telecast on 22nd Oct. I will get it afterwards and upload in youtube.

Amitsingh Kushwah said...

बधाई मणीमारण जी। यह हम सबके लिए खुशी की बात है कि आपको टीवी पर हकलाहट के बारे में बातचीत करने का अवसर मिला। अब मीडिया में हकलाहट पर चर्चा होने लगी है, यह एक शुभ संकेत है।