A Bangalore based radio station dedicated to exploring ‘gender fluidity’ is making waves in India and the rest of the world, judging by the level of media coverage it has gotten.
The “Q” in Q Radio “stands for queer,” explains a station staffer in the YouTube video below. “It is for the LBGT community. It is about giving them a space, a single platform to celebrate or to advocate or be an activist on anything that is close to them.”
The feature on Q Radio includes an interview with a woman who came out to her husband and parents.
“I didn’t know the term ‘lesbian’ or that there were lesbians around or that’s the term they should be put under,” she says. “I didn’t know any of this. It is not a term ever spoken . . . I belong to Kerala. It’s not a word ever spoken in Kerala.”
Q Radio is distributed by the radiowalla.in platform. Alas, I can’t listen to it from where I am (San Francisco, California) on radiowalla.in’s web portal. “Region Block,” a pop up tells me: “Sorry! You are accessing this content from an unauthorized zone.”
But I am enjoying radiowalla’s mission statement. Before you read it, keep in mind that “walla” in Hindi means a worker in charge of a specified thing—for example the tens of thousands of “DabbaWallas” in Mumbai who deliver lunch boxes (Dabba) to office staff. A “ChaiWalla” delivers Chai. So now you get what “radiowalla” means:
At Radiowalla Network Pvt. Ltd., we don’t believe in “dumbing down for the masses”, as is the case with most genre based radio channels today. We take great pride in the fact, that in order to make it to the Radiowalla.in platform, a channel must have great sound and quality of content, great production value, an expert curator, a human touch element with whom the audience identifies, a competitive differentiation factor and a need that it fulfills! Phew! Only then, is it worthy of Radiowalla! . . .
We figured that you can have your own Doodhwalla, Chaiwalla, Dabbawalla…
So why not enjoy your own personal… Radiowalla?
