From sending broadcast messages on WhatsApp to becoming a podcaster with gaatha story… the journey of Chants of India with Sriram.
How many times do you get to hire your former boss to work with you? My guess is, not too often. In that respect, I believe we were lucky. Sriram, my former boss, is now the host of a new podcast we just launched at gaatha story, titled Chants of India by Sriram.
In early 2018, we began to thin of launching of a podcast on meditation and spirituality, which I thought was a good complement to Baalgatha Podcast. Nearly 1 in every 6 of Baalgatha listeners are over 55 years of age, probably they are grandparents who want to listen and then narrate the stories to their grandchildren. (Baalgatha is a weekly podcast in three, soon four languages, and it is a show of bedtime stories for Kids under the age of 8).
But somehow, we were not able to find the right format. Around the same time, that is, March 2018, Sriram, my ex-boss with whom I have stayed in touch over the years, started sending his chants and narrations over WhatsApp. For him. narrating the mantras is a hobby and he passionately and regularly sent his audio files to a select group that he created using WhatsApps’s broadcast feature. I was fortunate to be one of the recipients.
As the months passed, my wife and I began to listen to Sriram’s narration with interest. Over a period of time, a thought started brewing in our heads: Why not launch a show based on these very narrations? Sri Ram and I had several conversations about it between September and October 2018. We even put up a few sample recordings on SoundCloud, where we test out new shows. The feedback was very positive, and a signal that the show that we had in mind was doable.
With November 2018 came the Diwali festival, and the upcoming new year and this thing called life all kept us away from working on this show. As January 2019 approached, we finally decided to go ahead and launch the Chants of India by Sriram Podcast. Today, the show goes live with two episodes. As on today, we have over 20 episodes already in place, and we cannot wait to publish them!
Hope you will find Chants of India by Sriram a podcast worth listening to: it will be available on Apple Podcasts, Soptify, Stitcher, TuneIn and other fine websites and apps shortly. Of course, you can listen on the gaatha story website. And when you do listen, we will appreciate your feedback!
(Note: We host almost all our podcasts on Audioboom, and thanks to their awesome team in India, we have launched 9 podcasts over the past three years.)
