Eight o’clock will never be the same: BBC TV news for Gujaratis launched

Gujaratis love their evenings. To outsiders, this may sound a bit strange as evenings for many in the world are for raising a toast with their favourite wine, but the dry state of Gujarat heralds its evenings in its own way.

For Gujaratis, evenings are synonymous with conversations over delicious snacks famously called farsan and a steaming cup of cutting chai.

Unlike our counterparts in the east of India, we don’t have a Manna Dey rendition of the song Coffee Houser Sei Addata, but we Gujaratis sure know how to savour our chai pe charcha (discussion over tea).

However, the charcha is set to becoming a lot more intense, brewing with new flavours and narratives.

Tailor-made for the Gujarati palate, BBC Samchar launched on 16 July and is our 30-minute evening television bulletin, airing on GSTV Monday-Friday at 8pm IST (India Standard Time).

With sea on one side and desert on another, Gujarat is a land of contrasts.

If the exquisite Hindu-Islamic-Jain architecture of Ahmedabad brought it the title of UNESCO World Heritage City, it’s the acrimonious coexistence of the communities that also makes it one of the most ghettoised cities of India.

If the state boasts of one of most successful female cooperatives in the country, there are also some villages with fewer than 400 women per 1000 men.

If it is the land where Freddie Mercury, aka Farookh Bulsara, had his roots, it is also the land that dethroned a prince, the erstwhile royal Manavendra Singh Gohil, for revealing his sexual orientation.

In October last year we launched the BBC News Gujarati website, as part of the expansion of World Service. Up until then, the BBC service for Gujaratis was a Hindi radio broadcast, or television news in English. 

To most Gujaratis, the BBC is the most trusted and reliable media organisation in the world, so BBC Samchar brings together the best of the BBC’s content produced globally and nationally.

As the clock strikes eight, the vistas in the vibrant state differ from one city to another.

While the state capital Gandhinagar slows its pace for the day, the diamond city of Surat lights up at its glitziest best, the women in the milk co-operatives of Anand tread home after the day’s work to prepare dinner, and on the other side, the white collar men of Vadodara and Rajkot come home from the office to piping hot meals, and Ahmedabad’s jewellery quarter Manek Chowk becomes a bustling night market for foodies.

Gujarat is busy, energetic, weary, and hopeful as the clock strikes eight, and now with BBC Samchar, it will also be informed, intrigued, inspired, engaged, empathetic and more.

BBC News Gujarati is available here.