‘I have grown up with Binaca Geetmala’

BENGALURU: For actor Pawan Kumar, going against the tide has sort of become a norm. While the world is moving ahead with visual content, the actor-director has come up with his podcast series, titled Lockdown Tapes: Confessions by Pawan, on his YouTube channel. While the content is in Kannada, Kumar is also considering bringing in some of it in English to gauge people’s reactions. 

While the first leg of the daily podcast has just got over, after 10 sessions, the actor is going to start the second season in a few days. “I am treating it like the first season of a series. Moreover, I don’t want it to be a force-fed thing. I am going to be out with the second season in the next few days,” says Pawan Kumar, who started the podcast to keep himself creatively engaged during the lockdown. “It is a way to keep myself going creatively during this phase.

I started it to keep up with the drive of doing something out of the box,” he adds. The content brought by Pawan Kumar mostly revolves around his life so far, his theatre days and his tips on how to keep oneself positive during this pandemic. “In my ninth episode, I had asked people if they would be interested in my love story or movies, and very strangely, a majority of them voted for the latter. Moreover, my father is among the listeners, so I don’t want to give out all the details,” chuckles Kumar. He also adds that the content of his podcast depends on his mood too while he is recording it.

Kumar starts recording his audio clips every night at 9 o’clock, with a timer set at 10 minutes. He is quite strict about sticking to the planned length of the audio clips because, according to him, anything more than that could be a drag for the listeners. It has also worked in his favour to create curiosity among the listeners. 

The podcast has rave reviews, and the comments section hardly has any negative comments. The common feedback he often gets is that his session reminds many of ‘old-school radio’. “I’ve been brought up with Binaca Geet Mala playing at home because my mother was a huge fan of the show. But in my podcast, I don’t try to imitate a style, I just talk like that,” says Kumar, who posted the first episode on April 17. Through his series, he also wants people to take a break from constantly staring at a device. That’s also the reason for his decision to just add a picture for the post, so that the listeners are not visually distracted.