Entertainment
RJ course by Fun Asia and EMDI gives flight to many dreams
As the sun sets around a building housing the corporate home of Fun Asia Network (FAN) in Dubai’s Media City, for a bunch of people with the female gender prominent, Friday evening is actually a new dawn for them in a sense. Huddled together at the orientation ceremony of a radio jockey course at the ground floor of the Zee Tower, hopes of the aspirants are soaring in anticipation to a new beginning.
An initiative of the UAE institute of EMDI with FAN, who have four radio channels and are offering a two-month paid internship, “participants will learn not just about how to be a radio jockey, but also other aspects about radio programming,” according to the FAN business head Sunny Ahuja.
For some ‘students’, the six-month course to be held on weekends will allow many adults to re-write their destiny. There is Nidhi Vohra, for whom destiny willed to be the last enrolment for the course even though it was always her dream. “I wanted to be a radio jockey and follow my passion for music, but my parents said, choose a ‘proper career’ because this was not something you did normally back then,” she says.
“So I did law and became a lawyer. Then I got married, but stayed as a homemaker, discharging my duties as a mother to my two kids. I heard about the course on radio while on a school run, but did not muster much courage. Then a few weeks later, a friend who knows me closely and my dream heard about it and pushed me. Even now, I have taken the course fee as a loan from my husband, not sure how it will work out … but here I am as the last person to join!”
The trepidations about financials and doing something different from routine is a common under-current. Many turned out to be teachers who want to practice after preaching lessons on building self-confidence in the path to discover oneself.
Participants at the orientation ceremony for a course in Radio Jockeying by Fun Asia Network in association with EMDI.
Yet, there is someone, who is trying to re-ignite her passion. Ukraine’s Polina Dikanskaya is in the UAE for eight years and working in real estate. “I was a radio jockey when I was young and back in Ukraine. But, I left it and changed many fields, including the backend office at a real estate developer. My radio experience in Ukraine was in the Russian language. This course is to fulfill my expectations so that I don’t have any regret.”
Drishti Goyal, a mother of two, is also rekindling her passion. She appeared on the Indian singing talent show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in 2008, but married life can go many ways for females. Now she is a Reiki healer. “When I joined the course, it was to be an RJ. But today, I realised there is a bigger picture (on being told that there will be other aspects of radio programming as part of the course curriculum)… And I believe every voice you utter, has the power to heal.”
With instructors from EMDI and a platform such as FAN, owned by US-based Indian Sam Thakkar, the power of healing for many RJ aspirants has begun. By the end of the year, some lives will take a new turn. A male participant, also a teacher, summed it aptly through an old Hindi song: ‘Ruk jaana nahin tu kabhi haarke .. kaanto pe chalke milenge saaye bahaar ke’ (Don’t you stop feeling lost, only after walking on thorns will you find the comfort of blooming flowers).
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