When Ameen Sayani failed Hindi audition

New Delhi, February 17

Legendary Ameen Sayani started his career as an English broadcaster but when he went for an audition for AIR’s Hindi section, he was told after the test that there are hints of English and Gujarati in his accent and he cannot be recruited.

But Sayani was not someone to be disheartened and went on to become one of India’s most loved radio presenters.

Scriptwriter Rakesh Anand Bakshi has come out with a new book “Let’s Talk on Air: Conversations with Radio Presenters” in which he chronicles Sayani’s journey along with 13 other popular radio jockeys, including Yunus Khan, Rohini, Mamta Singh, Sayema, Hrishikay Kannan, Anuraag ‘picture’ Pandey and Anmol.

Sayani was born in Mumbai in a multilingual family on December 21, 1932 and further seeped in a ‘Bambai ki khichdi Hindustani bhasha’ (Mumbai’s porridge of Hindustani language). “My early schooling was at New Era School, which used Gujarati as a medium in the primary standards, with more emphasis on the English language creeping in from fifth grade on,” he says in the book.

He also started writing small pieces for his mother’s fortnightly journal called “Rehbar” that used three scripts — Devanagari, Gujarati and Urdu.

Sayani says by the age of 13, he had already become a fairly proficient broadcaster in English. — PTI