Being Ameen Sayani: Indian radio's golden voice

RADIO GAGA: Ameen Sayani says it was by fluke that he got a chance to voice his first commercial.

        

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Keywords: Ameen Sayani, Being Legends

For India’s post-independence generation, Ameen Sayani’s voice invokes the joy of Hindi film music with a habit of radio. In that socialist era, Sayani’s programmes and commercials were about little bit of choice.

Anuradha SenGupta: You are going to pre-empt everything I do. You have made a legendary career out of being on this side of the camera.

Ameen Sayani: I must tell you a little secret to my success. I’m a commercial broadcaster who gives people headaches with his programmes and then sells analgesics to get rid of those headaches, and if that doesn’t work then he sells them toothpaste. You know, so that they learn how to grin and bear it.

As far as my broadcasting career goes, I think I was always the wrong man at the right place, kicked around towards various goal posts and somehow it clicked. For instance, I was born in a Kutch family, which had never been to Kutch.

So there were a number of languages clashing with each other in my family. It was mainly Gujarati and a lot of English because my mother had a governess at home and had learnt English. I went to a Gujarati school where I learnt Gujarati for seven years. I could read, write, speak and even think in Gujarati. I counted in Gujarati and I still count in Gujarati. It so happened that my brother, Hamid, became an exceptional English broadcaster.

When I was about seven, he started taking me to All India Radio and started introducing me to English broadcasting. So from the age of seven till 16, I was an English broadcaster. I hadn’t studied Hindi or Urdu extensively. Then around 1950, Radio Ceylon opened an agency. They had a programme production section and Hamid became the programme director.

So I went to him and said give me some work Hamidbhai. Hamid said he was doing some English programme there and I could assist him if I wished. He said, “As for Hindi, we have some excellent Hindi broadcasters. You have been a Gujarati broadcaster and haven’t studied Hindi, so you better go and study first; only then can you be allowed to broadcast in Hindi.

Foray into Hindi broadcasting

It was by fluke that one day that Ameen Sayani was hanging around the Radio Ceylon Bombay studio, which was at St Xavier’s College, that he was asked to read out a commercial and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ameen Sayani: One day a producer called me and said, “I see you sitting at the back bench and ogling at girls everyday. You don’t do any work. I know that you are an English broadcaster and a Gujarati student. Here is a Hindi script. My Hindi broadcaster hasn’t come and he’s giving me tremendous amount of problems. Will you tell somebody to translate it for you into Roman so that you can read it out?” I said, “Srivasatvaji I may not speak great Hindi but I am well-versed with Hindi and Urdu scripts.”

My mother was a shishya (disciple) of Gandhiji and for 20 years, at that time it was only 12, my mother had been editing and publishing a magazine from our house in three scripts. So I read out the commercial for him. I was a naye Bharat ke naya nau jawan (youngster of a new India).

The commercial was for a health drink called Ovaltine so I read it out with great gusto, almost shouting at some points. Srivatavaji blocked his ears and said, “Hold it. What do you think you’re doing? Quarrelling with somebody? We don’t need any pehelwans (body builders) here. Read it like a normal human being.” Then I read it a little normally. Recording went off first class. First take was okayed. Then he asked me to be there every week and be his announcer. That was my first job in Hindi broadcasting - just reading that little commercial. So I asked him, “This is commercial radio, so Srivastavaji I think you will be paying me, right?” He said, “Who’s going to pay you? Don’t be silly.” But he started giving me on tin of Ovaltine every week and to that, I think, I owe my good health in broadcasting - 57 years.

Anuradha SenGupta: You did not consider anything else ever?

Ameen Sayani: I did actually. I had lots of ambitions. I wanted to become a lawyer. I wanted to become a politician and end up as the Prime Minister of India. I always had great ideas of what I would be when I grow up but then all I ever became was a poor ‘common-tator.’