The Birlas' - PARINAMA

Chapter - 6: New Jouney Part-B

At Akshnav's Residence in Mumbai:

Akshara was busy shooting for the promo of her newly signed reality show. It was supposed to be called 'Singer Of The Decade' which initially had judges from three different generations judging it as planned. Akshara was representing the current generation. They were going to get a popular music director from the 2000s and a hotshot male director on board, but things got changed midway. 

To save themselves from embarrassment, they claimed that they wanted to play the suspense game and intended to keep the judges' names a secret. They were recruiting achievers from the music industry to judge the contestants in the auditions. Only when the contestants reach the Mega audition, they will know who their judges are. That will give the makers time to finalize and sign popular names. 

But the channel didn't have any of their excuses. This show was a first of its kind for the channel and they were investing huge amounts of money on it. They wanted everything to be perfect. Akshara was already forced to shift base to Mumbai which irritated her enough but after reaching Mumbai and sorting her dates, she got informed that the show has been delayed by a month due to some crisis in the channel management.

Power struggle was going on and recently they saw a power shift. Everything she already knew about the show changed. The age limit of the contestants was removed. The show was renamed as Musical Mastane. The scoring pattern was removed, and everything was in the hands of audience. The judges will just get to save a contestant each based on their performance. The judging panel was filled with legends. 

It had the OG singer - Ashwini Aiyer, Grammy winning music director - Haroon Rai, a young Superstar who also happens to be a musician - Tanuj Virani,  Famous movie director cum music composer - Padma Shri Praneeth Subhash and National Award winning lyricist - Bharti Bharadwaj. She soon realized that she wasn't part of the panel anymore because everyone else was far too experienced. 

That's when they requested her to be the host for the show. She was doubtful about hosting it because she herself is a Superstar and she believed that she deserved to be judging at this stage of her career. So, she refused the offer and started looking for other projects now that she was in Mumbai anyways.

In the past weeks, it so happened that Ms.Ashwini Aiyer suffered a bad accident and she wasn't in a state to do the show after everything was done. The posters had her name, the promos were airing, auditions were almost getting over but the situation at hand couldn't be helped. That's what made the makers approach Akshara again. This time, they were in need of a female singer who was ruling the charts and Akshara fit the bill perfectly.

She held it against them for treating her that way but didn't show it. She ensured that the deal was way more lucrative than it was earlier and made it a point to have the team apologize to her for the confusion and rejection. This pampered her ego and there she was shooting for the promo. Because everyone thought Ashwini Aiyer was on the panel, it was important to announce the change. 

The promo would take at least another week to air. That is pretty much after the auditions in Jaipur. So Akshara had to travel to Jaipur first and then after two days, the last leg of auditions would resume in Mumbai. After which there will be Mega auditions and then the show will start. The production team had to literally beg Akshara's team to accommodate dates for the Jaipur and Mumbai auditions as it was all last minute. But in the end, she kindly obliged by going against her team. 

At least she made them believe that. So, she was busy packing to travel to Jaipur after 3 days because she had committed to back-to-back recordings earlier. She had to fulfill that commitment and that will leave her with no time at hand before she flew to Jaipur. She called up Vikram, her newfound confidant and discussed something with him. She definitely has an ace up her sleeve and her smirk said all. Is she planning something against the Birlas again? If she did how successful do you think she will be?