It took an hour and a half to wrap it, but it was done. The ponniyinselvan egroup got itself on TV.
The shoot was to be at Dreams Net, a browsing centre in West Mambalam, at 11.30 AM. Eventually though, the camera crew and the producer (Mr. Arul Raj and Mr. Jabez) arrived only by 12.30 PM- which was a good thing in a way, 'cause we wanted to get our thoughts in order.
Kamalakannan, I, Lavanya, Anuradha and Krupashankar assembled at Dreams Net (Phone calls and emails to the other Trippers wasn't fruitful- they couldn't make it for various reasons). The first thing, of course, was to decide what we must talk about- and how(because the actual news item is only gonna be 10 minutes- so we had to say a lot of things in short order).
Eventually, we decided that I would do the Introduction part of it, Kamal would talk about how to enrol as a member to our group and how to access its facilities, and Lavanya would describe our PS trip. (Krupa and Anuradha steadfastly refused to appear before the camera:-)
I suppose we were all jittery (I know I was:-)- but we decided to extemporize, for all that ( notes have a way of failing you when you badly need info).
The too-bright arclights blazed into existence (dazzling all of us), Mr. Arul adjusted the camera and instructed me about how to pin the mike-thingie, the browsing centre people crowded around us (with shushings to everyone to 'be silent')- and the shoot started.
It all went without a hitch. I said my piece (all about how PS started and what its reach was,and), Kamal instructed everyone about how to log on to PS (with details about how to access everything from files to Photos), and Lavanya spoke about the trip (with acknowledgements to the people who helped us and the places we visited).
In spite of it all, they shot Anuradha looking thru PS messages on the Net:-).
When Kamal flicked thru the photo section, the cameraman wanted us to click on an image of 'Sivagami' (we explained to him that it wasn't 'Sivagami', but 'Nandhini').
He nodded. "Oho. Appa Naaganandhi padam pOdungga."
It took us some time to explain that Naganandhi wasn't on the photos section yet, and this was all about PS only.:-)
At 2 PM, and numerous camera angles later, it came to an end. (
After taking some photos, PS groupukku oru periya 'O' pottappuram, we marched out of the browsing centre, feeling victorious.
The piece on PS is gonna be telecast on Monday (31st March)- at 5 PM (Indian time)in SUN TV, as a part of the programme 'Chennai Times'. So get ready to watch it.
I'm 14 years old and I live in the US. My family bought Sun TV a month back. i saw your piece about Ponninyin Selvan online on it. It was wonderful. ALthough I can read Tamil, I'm rather slow at it (having spoken English for 14 years now!). However when Mr. C.V Karthik narayanan translated all five volumes into English I was overjoyed. I want to thank your group very deeply for comingup with this egroup.