On August 28, at 5 in the morning, Radio Jockey Dheena of Big FM in Chennai put on the song Ulaga Naayakane from Dasavatharam and put an end to his non-stop live show that started on August 21 at 5 am. Yes, he was live, on air for 168 hours. With that, Dheena became the world record holder and entered the Guinness World Records bettering the earlier record by a clean 33 hours.
The previous world record of 135 hours was set by Italian RJ Stefano Venneri in 2007. When Big FM asked Dheena whether he was ready to challenge the record, he jumped at it.
It's a great achievement for this 35-year-old mechanical engineer from Salem, who came to Chennai in search of a job in 1996. Though he worked as an engineer till 2003, he was only too aware of all the spare time he had to be in some other creative field.
When rediff.com met Dheena on September 5, the day he resumed duty after the marathon show, he was talking more about Teacher's Day than his record-breaking feat.
Once he finished his Big Vanakkam show at 11 am, we sat down to talk about his achievement.
Caption: RJ Dheena with the BIG FM team after he broke the record
Text: Shobha Warrier | Photographs and video: Sreeram Selvaraj
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