Chennai: In an era of proliferating podcast platforms and a landscape crowded with political debate, celebrity or influencer interviews and talk shows, Congress legislator Karti P. Chidambaram has launched something deliberately different. Featuring the common citizenry, his three-month-old YouTube podcast, K-Medai steps away from politics to spotlight ordinary people with extraordinary stories.
K-Medai is planned less as a conventional interview show, and more as a curated space for human interest. ‘Medai‘ means stage in Tamil, and staying true to its name, the podcast has provided a stage to the stories of people from different sectors, from farmers to financial analysts.
“The concept is simple yet distinctive since it just captures the lives of common people. Guests who are non-political, individuals who possess uniqueness in their interests, occupations, life journeys, styles or passions, but who are not necessarily famous. It is rare for someone who is established in politics to do interviews with common people. I wanted to keep the platform free of political discussion and focus instead on personal narratives that might otherwise go unheard,” Chidambaram told ThePrint.
Recent conversations on Karti Chidambaram’s podcast have featured stories from an elderly-care home that reveal the emotional lives of mothers who arrive there, a dancer whose performances have taken him to international stages, a para-athlete who overcame polio contracted at the age of two to become a national champion, and other ordinary citizens whose paths contain straggles as well as achievements.
A team of three is involved in the selection of guests, arranging the recordings, editing and production of the pre-recorded podcast. “We are looking at highlighting extraordinary achievements of common people. As a politician, Karti sir could interview anyone but we did not want to be another podcasts talking to other politicians or celebrities. All those people already have a platform where they are recognised but slice of life of the common people is something we wanted to bring to light,” said Senthil, part of the video production team of K-Medai in Chennai.
The production process is planned well in advance, with shoots completed for a few months, edited, and released every Friday, with a promo typically going out the day before on Thursday. In order to engage and to reach out to a wider any set of people, the channel also features a dedicated WhatsApp number to let people contact the team and share their stories that can be featured in the podcast.
The profiles featured in the show, such as that of R. Devarajan, a 62-year-old Chennai resident who is a B.Com (CA) graduate, spent more than 35 years as a financial analyst and has built a substantial body of work as a music director and playback singer, feature interesting stories of not-so-popular personalities.
Devarajan has composed the score for the Tamil film Virumandikkum Sivanandikkum (2016) and worked more than 60 studio albums, with five more devotional albums currently in production. He also brings over five decades of hands-on experience as a vegetarian cook, having run an outdoor catering business and now operating a dairy-products manufacturing venture. Multi-hyphenate lives like his, who is a finance professional, film composer, culinary entrepreneur, sit comfortably at the heart of what K-Medai seeks to explore as a podcast.
“It is quite interesting to interact with people from various walks of life and talk to them about their journey. I did not want to involve anything political in the podcast. It is purely non-political and we are happy to be able to bring such encouraging and interesting stories to a wider audience,” says Chidambaram.
According to another team member, Archana Tulsian, the response has been encouraging. “The selection of a person from for the podcast completely depends on their stories. We started off three months ago and he wanted to make sure that the people being interviewed are the heroes of the podcast. It is an open platform. We are focusing on the Tamil audience to engage the locals first and maybe expand nationally as the channel grows. People are very interested in watching and sharing their own stories because know it is a very honest conversation so it is getting a good response,” says Archana.
Viewers and listeners are actively recommending potential guests, sending profiles to the dedicated WhatsApp number set up for the purpose. By removing politics from the frame, Karti Chidambaram has created a space for conversations about craft, perseverance, second careers, personal reinvention and the many ways people build meaningful lives outside the spotlight.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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