Embarking on the journey of TGV Hindi
#vulnerabilityseries
Writing this post so candidly straight from the gut and heart to challenge myself very openly and seek your feedback again a few months from now :)
After launching The Guiding Voice(TGV) podcast series on May 17th, 2020, I’ve interviewed over 350 guests across the globe and launched 308 episodes as of Feb 16th, 2023.
Of late, I’ve been getting requests from the TGV audience to launch content in Vernacular language to expand its reach so that it will benefit people from all walks of life(not just professional students, IT employees, and entrepreneurs).
After deliberate contemplation, I took the step of launching TGV Telugu on July 24th, 2022, and released 36 episodes as of 15th Feb 2023.
And there were requests from a few of my friends to start TGV in Hindi, but I was not keen on doing that initially as I am NOT so fluent in Hindi(our national language). I am not a native speaker but learned the language in my school and have been speaking to non-Telugu folks like shopkeepers, cab drivers, friends, etc.
Now the question is should I really take the risk of taking up the challenge of launching TGV in Hindi when I know about 50–60% of the language (kind of low to moderate fluency)? This haunted me for a few months however I didn’t want to stay in my comfort zone and approached a few of my friends within TGV Innercircle (Sangeeta Doni, Sucharita Karri & Parul Gupta). And also Anand Goud(the latest crew member) They have readily agreed to join hands with me and encouraged me to launch TGV Hindi.
We had a few interactions during Q4'22 finalizing the format, deciding potential topics, etc. and started planning a few episodes. But we couldn’t make much progress in 2022.
Come 2023, we caught up over the weekends and finally scripted and recorded 2 episodes to be precise. This is the first time, I took a chance to launch a podcast with just 1 episode in the inventory(as I always believe in the concept of saving it for the rainy day) but this time it is different and I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. On Jan 27th, 2023, with just one more episode in the pipeline, we launched an introductory episode which got a moderate response.
As a person who strongly believes in the concept that “success doesn’t come overnight”, I have been telling myself to be patient like I am doing in the case of TGV English & Telugu and I decided to move ahead. Encouraged my fellow moderators to start planning the content giving them a free hand of interviewing people and even planning their own solo episodes. I strongly believe that teamwork and diversity are crucial for building anything significant. Sucharita Karri has interviewed Abhijit Agarwal on The power of resilience — how to deal with the odds in life(असफलता और विपत्ति से उठना) and the episode is released today.
Sucharita has done a commendable job in interviewing the guest so well — it doesn’t feel that it is her first interview as a host.
While Sucha interviewed Abhijit, I interviewed Charudatta Pande(one of our best well-wishers and a good friend). Charu was kind enough to take the leap of faith assumption and joined me in the conversation which will be released next Friday.
Here comes the tricky part — having done interviews effortlessly in English and Telugu, I had butterflies in my stomach while doing the first semi-structured interview in Hindi with Charu. Honestly appreciate Charu’s encouragement and support. Frankly speaking, I didn’t speak good Hindi and my grammar sucked.
I am sure it is a big risk of exposing oneself to uncomfortable situations esp in the content creation world which is full of smart and talented people. And I am ready to take the risk of being criticized for my language/grammar. The reason is very simple. if you want to make it big, be vulnerable. Break the shell and get a new lease on life.
This post is a way to prep up the community to be ready to witness the imperfection and at the same time encourage me to improve.
Will keep trying my best to gain more and more fluency in Hindi and show the world that nothing is impossible.
Wait for another post about my #TGVHindi journey a few months from now!
Until then, wish me the best of luck :)
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
