THE TELLY AWARDS COUNTDOWN

With less than a week to go before the fifth edition of the Indian Telly Awards gets underway at Mumbai, the excitement in the Indiantelevision.com offices is palpable. Rehearsals for performances, shoots for on air promos, sprucing up of the venue, it's all happening here and how!

Telly Chakkar will maintain a reporter's diary on the day's events, bringing you a behind the scenes look at the work in progress…

Today, the team tracks the production team and camera crew as they get ready to catch the award nominees on the sets of their respective shoots on a lazy Sunday afternoon, for sound bytes for the promos.

2:00 pmA team of ten has set out to get the best of the stars for the Telly Awards sound bytes. It's a bright Sunday afternoon when the team of ten catches up with Rajeev Khandelwal at a studio in Andheri, where he's busy with a photo shoot. Rajeev is busy touching up his face while being briefed about his few candid moments on our camera. Rajeev's star value is apparent - despite it being a Sunday, he had to rush for another shoot from there. Gosh, do stars really work that hard?

3:15pm On to Vandana Pathak's house, also in Andheri (West). Definitely no Jayashree in real life, Vandana welcomes us into her lovely apartment with a warm smile with her kids (Radhika and Yash) in tow. Radhika betters her mom with some wonderful sound bytes. Vandana's clearly enjoying her Sunday, as she rushes to join her kids and their friends in the nearby colony playground!

4.30 pm The traffic can be a killer even on Sunday afternoons. Yet, Ronit Bose Roy is waiting for us with a smile at the Akraman Studios at Goregaon. He calls us into his makeup van at the Kasautii Zindagi Kay, where he's catching a movie with his friend between shots. Who was it who said Ronit's a reticent guy? He chats nineteen to the dozen with us, and complies with all the cameraman's requests.

5.45 pm Neha Bamb calls us from the Sankraman studios to say she's ready for her bytes. Sunday is definitely not a day when the stars rest! The crew rushes around to the Kaisa Ye Pyar Hai set to find her relaxing in her van with her pet dog Frankie for company. And yes, she insists on doing her make-up and hair before every sentence!

7:30 pm By now, we are fatigued, but still raring to go and meet up with one more star on our list…. Chetan Hansraj. Chetan's at the gym but by the time we reach Khar, he's reached home too. Incidentally, Chetan's wife had her 'god bharai' ceremony earlier the same day, and Chetan's all excited at the prospect of turning dad soon!

We catch Chetan lounging around in his nicely done up verandah ( artistically decorated with lamps and the cushions just in place). Must mention that Chetan is the most fancy-free celebrity we have met for a long time yet!

8:30 pm Finally, our last catch of the day - Pawan Shankar. When we track him down to the Sony office, he's wolfing down an entire pizza!

Pawan sings a song for our sound byte and must say, that while he insists that he wasn't a good singer, our verdict is that he makes a pretty good singer (He sang Yeh Laal Rang….for us) He makes our work easier; he's fast, brimming with ideas and quite cool.

11:00 pm Finally, back to the office to find it still buzzing with activity in preparation for the big awards nite. It's a Sunday well spent meeting some of the really interesting people in tellydom, but there's lots more work in store on the morrow. Miles to go till we all sleep…