An Open Letter To The Voice Of Radio: ‘Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover’

Making career choices can be one of the most difficult decisions ever in life. Not everybody is a born Picasso, Amitabh Bachchan, Taylor Swift, or Malishka. But everybody certainly wants to be one like them.

There’s nothing wrong in wanting to be like somebody, but it’s pretty difficult to step into somebody else’s shoes and do what they do with the same ease.

This is not a piece of fiction, no imagination or obligation but just a piece of appreciation and admiration for the people who’ve taught me that life is too beautiful to give up on it and too short to mourn over the little hurdles it produces.

I was 20 and still on the verge of figuring out what and who I wanted to be. A lot of people inspired and motivated me in the first 20 years of my life. People who were successful, rich and famous. I was pretty sure I wanted to be in the same coterie.

With a pre-determined agenda to explore my talents and capabilities, I joined a leading Radio Station as an intern. The job of a Radio Jockey had always enthralled me. Take oodles of speaking and talking, add a hint of glamour to it and mix it well with the right amount of paparazzi and fame, and ta-da, presenting to you an RJ. Desirable and easy, both in the same plate. Who wouldn’t want a job like that?

But as a popular English proverb says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”, for not always that appears to be shinier on the outside is equally shiny on the inside.

A Radio Jockey has a truckload of plus points in them. Their voice, their style of presentation, their sense of humour, their wit, their presence of mind; but one thing that makes us like them is the freshness that they add to our car drives to and fro work, the energy that they fill the women with at their homes, and the bloom that they add to our otherwise gloomy days.

But have we ever pondered over the fact that just like us, they too have a life and with life comes responsibilities, duties, stress, pressure, nervousness, apprehensions, agitation, ah got too much to handle right? Exactly my point. They too have too much on their plate yet not a soul can point it out when they’re on air.

But then you might wonder what’s so special about that, everybody does it. Right?

But these people are special because they put their listener’s preferences, moods, ideas above their own moods and emotional requirements. Sometimes when gloomy, all a person wants to do is stay alone and give some space to their mind to relax and process the burden but they instead are circled by people whom they sometimes don’t even know. But to celebrate their life, and their happiness. There are rewards and perks of course, but no reward or perk can fill the void that an emotional stress has created.

It is their job to entertain, inform and aware people which they do but it isn’t their duty to smile and joke around even after having lost somebody special in their lives, but they do. It is their job to complete the daily working hours in the office but it isn’t their duty to do overtime just for the sake of satisfying their listeners leaving their family alone, waiting, but they do.

An actor can still take a break, but an RJ can’t because famous they are, but not equally privileged. But still ask a Radio Jockey about their job satisfaction, and they will give the widest smile and answer that they love it and wouldn’t trade for anything else in life.

Each day at work used to be an altogether new experience for me, and as I believe, every experience gives birth to a deeper insight, by the end of my internship I had a better vision to look at and appreciate life.

Thank you for teaching me the value of work, the value of sorrows, and the value of sufferings, for it only makes a person stronger and wiser.

(The views and opinions expressed here are personal).