30-hour-long musical odyssey to woo the Guinness records

“I started whistling purely by accident. One of my uncles was very good at whistling and, finding it fascinating, I started imitating him at the age of six. Once I turned seven, my father encouraged me to develop this talent and I started training under Rajat Tarkas, the founder of A Whistling World. I just had this idea that, since I’m good at whistling, I should try and achieve something with the talent. It wasn’t a long-cherished dream or anything. I made the decision in February and gradually trained myself over the next few months. Initially I could whistle for only about eight hours. But once I successfully did two 30-hour sessions, my confidence grew and I just went for it,” says Pooja, a 19-yearold B.Com student. 

Pooja whistled popular songs from four languages - Tamil, English, Hindi and Korean. “I’m a huge fan of K-pop and wanted to bring out that love in my performance. That’s why I picked out a few Korean songs as well,” she adds. Some of the popular Hindi songs that got the audience on their feet at the event were Doli saja ke rakhna and Tum ho from Rockstar.

Referring to the challenges of the performance, she adds, “Rather than the stress on my vocal chords, the real struggle was sitting in a chair for 30 hours, with no sleep, and limited food and bathroom breaks. I was only allotted a 5-minute break every hour which I chose to cumulate. So, I got a 15 to 20-minute break every four hours. I couldn’t have done this without my friends who came out to the venue and supported me by cheering and egging me on. I just hope that with this record, the general conception of whistling as something negative will change and people will start accepting whistling as a talent just like singing and dancing.” 

The video recordings and documents of the performance have been sent to the Guinness official committee for scrutiny and final confirmation.