Actress Radhika Apte, who was last seen onscreen in ‘Bazaar, has said that recently launched Audible app is completely diverse in its nature.
Radhika Apte was interacting with media when she launched Audible App in India along with Kalki Koechlin and Anupama Chopra, Founder and CEO of Audible, Donald Katz on Tuesday in Mumbai.
Global audio books market leader Audible launched its first Indian title on Tuesday, marking its formal entry into the country. As part of its launch, Audible featured a spoken word performance, of an excerpt from the Hussain Zaidi book ‘Mafia Queens of Mumbai’, by Bollywood actors Kalki Koechlin, Radhika Apte and Rajkumar Rao.
When asked Radhika what you think of diversity that Audible app offers, she said, “You take any genre or you take any kind of information that you want to listen irrespective of any subject is available here and people who are reading these stories are incredible performers and writers reading their own material as well so, it’s completely diverse in its nature. Now that I had a taste of it, I am sure there is long way to go. I think now I listen to it with a different perspective and see what works for me and what doesn’t work, how it is effective and why is it effective. I know they are launching lots of Hindi books as well so, I am really looking forward to that because I studied in Marathi and then, I studied in English so, I have read Marathi and English books. I understand Hindi perfectly well but I don’t read it very fast so now, I have very convenient way of knowing the literature of certain books that I have been wanting to know.”
Talking about her experience associating with Audible app, Radhika said, “As a child, I was brought up with lot of storytelling as storytelling is very big part of our culture and I remember listening to those cassettes of P.L Deshpande (Marathi author) reading his own books and there is another tape, I remember called chan chan goshti which means good good tales so, it was always there but I lost it for a long time and I got to know about Audible and I heard a book on Audible very recently when they got in touch with me so, it was just a perfect thing to do and I hadn’t explore expressing through voice only because in a video or stage, you have so many other things to enhance or support what you trying to communicate but here you just have your voice so, it’s about how you want to pitch it and what is the tonal quality or how you want to direct the imagination of the listener. It also personal because everyone is going to listen to it individually so, it’s like forming a personal relationship with listener so, I thought I would enjoy that and I did.”
When asked Radhika is there one story from ‘Mafia Queen of Mumbai’ that really appealed to you, she said, “Yes. There is Gangubai’s story that really appealed to me and that’s one of the stories that I read. Mostly because Mumbai is my home now and I am not really aware of how it would have been. I think all the mafia stories that I have seen so far are predominantly about men and women just sort of have secondary position but these stories are about women and especially Gangubai because I think she was victim of betrayal but she just not victimized herself. She stood shoulder to shoulder with all the dons and made her voice heard to literally the people who are governing the country. It’s such an inspiring story and she was very compassionate woman so, it was fascinating reading her story.”
When asked Radhika did she learnt anything from this book reading experience which she will take back to her craft of acting, she said, “I think speech has not given its due importance sometimes in films recently. Nowadays, people think that everything should be underplayed and candid but it’s important to breathing while you speak and it’s important to see where you breath. The importance of weight of the word is not well studied as it used to be because these actors used to deliver their lines and that’s not the case right now but here it mattered so much to see where you took that breath and how you finished a certain sentence and it was very good for me understand that again and again so, that’s the thing I will take back to my craft of acting.”
Audible has made its debut in India with a catalogue of 200,000 global titles and 400 Indian classic and contemporary titles. At launch, Audible will only have English language content for the Indian audience and is soon expected to release regional titles.
