The podcast industry has not yet flourished in India. It is a relatively new platform. Still, I chose that as the medium for my journalism product. But before we get on to why a podcast, a bit about how the medium itself came into being.  

Everyone is familiar with radio. It has been a popular entertainment and information platform for a long time. Today, radio channels usually play a few Bollywood songs along with the non-stop chatter of the radio jockeys. Indians usually listen to the radio while travelling, surf between multiple channels while they are on the go. But there are two things I observed about radio. One, the radio industry is saturated - there's not much new happening. Second, and a thing that's related to the first point, is that their financial model still rests on advertisements. 

 There have been experiments in community radio, especially in rural parts of India. Some of them have seen success with little resources. All said, radio has net positive popularity even today.
Podcasts are also an audio medium, but still in infancy in India. There's no addressable "market" as such, yet. In fact, popular FM channels are experimenting with podcasts. The very simple difference between radio and podcast is, I feel, attention--the latter commands more attention from the listener.

So when I decided to launch a podcast on menstrual hygiene in a regional language, many questions were raised.

Why audio when you have an audio-visual platform like YouTube that is comparatively well known?
Why don't you start writing about it? Like in a weekly digital magazine?
Who will listen to this kind of discussion?
Not everyone has podcast hosting apps installed on their phones. And so on.
My answers were simple. I had no bandwidth to create for YouTube. Further, I am no expert on menstrual hygiene. But I am a communicator.
A storyteller. More importantly, I am confident about the information gap about menstrual hygiene in the digital space. 

With the relative ease to produce and the affordability, the podcast medium seemed perfect at this stage for a lone ranger like me. That gave birth to Streelok, the first Marathi podcast on menstrual health and hygiene.

As a multimedia journalist, I have always worked on the video. I always visualize my story ideas and then shoot them accordingly. Editing the video story as per the script has been part of my profession. But working on audio has taught me different skills. With every new episode I produce for Streelok Podcast, I am learning how to tell an engaging story and create a picture in front of the listeners through words, voice and music. 
Streelok podcast talks about menstruation and menstrual hygiene, which is a very personal and a sensitive topic. Further it is a taboo to talk about it. I was sceptical at first about whether anybody would turn up to speak on this topic. But I was proven wrong by many women and girls who happily accepted my invitation to tell their stories as menstruating women.
With six episodes, Streelok has gobbled up 800+ downloads, and I am happy about it. Every episode is unique, and it feels great when listeners tell you that it feels like the guests are sitting next to you having a personal conversation. I hope that these discussions will help my community to destigmatize menstruation and normalise the conversation around it.
So here, I will present the behind-the-scenes of the Streelok podcast. I will share the process of creating each episode; how I choose the topics and the guests, the mistakes I make, the technology I use, the responses I get, and so on. There is a lot to share. Watch out for this space. :)