BENGALURU : Piyush Agarwal’s tryst with podcasting started with storytelling when he was a child. “It may sound clichéd but most of us get started with narration because of our grandparents. My grandparents had amazing stories to tell, and we would sit around them as they told us stories from Partition to their own childhoods,” he reminisces.
Agarwal, who conducted a podcast-making workshop at Lahe Lahe! on Sunday, says stories became an integral part of his life over the years, so much so that he found himself a thespian. “I started writing my own plays when I was in Class 7,” he says, adding that his love for perfomativity led him to co-found Tahatto, a theatre group based in the city. After spending nearly two decades on stage, he rediscovered his passion for reading and listening to stories through his journey with podcasting.
Agarwal has made two series of podcasts — Kahaani Jaani Anjaani and Grow Daily. “Kahaani Jaani Anjaani was a Hindi story podcast, based on the idea that I wanted to reconnect with my language. I felt that discovering literature in the language we think in, makes everything richer,” he says. Kahaani Jaani Anjaani, which covers a mix of contemporary as well as classical Hindi literature, has been downloaded 50,000 times.
The 32-year-old IT professional started listening to podcasts to add to his knowledge, and got hooked when a podcaster echoed the questions that he had been thinking of. “I thought here was a person I have never met, but he was able to echo what I was thinking,” he says. It took him a lot of courage to start Kahaani Jaani Anjaani. “Over time, my access to technology become better, and I realised I had all that I needed to start a podcast of my own,” he adds. His podcast, Grow Daily, helps businesses identify growth and marketing strategies.
The hunt for stories never stops, and Agarwal’s favourite place to look for stories is book stalls at railway stations. “These book stores have a lot of regional language content. The short stories that I can access there are brought out by very local publishers, and these are books you wouldn’t find in an established book store,” he explains. “As children when we travelled by train, we would buy books or comics at one station, and exchange the same books at the next major station,” he recalls. Now, Agarwal wants to create excitement for regional literature.
While his love for literature motivates him, he is also driven by the opportunity to connect with people he has never met. For him, audience reaction is an important part of the creative process. “We always welcome feedback in theatre, and it is the same for podcasts. Once a listener e-mailed me to say he preferred that I jump straight into the story, and save the author profiles for the end,” he says. “This give-and-take is something I value, and it has made a world of difference.”