She's got that girl-next-door look and yet she attracts immediate attention every time she is in a discotheque or a pub. Many, in fact, find it difficult to take their eyes off her. And almost always, she has the crowd dancing to her tunes. A not-too-difficult feat for Zaima Ahmed actually, who happens to be the only female DJ in Pune.Storming a male-dominated bastion is this petite 24-year-old botany graduate who came to Pune from Assam in 1994 for higher studies. Graduating from Fergusson College, she decided to change tracks and took up a marketing job with Commercial Ventures, a firm into designing websites. And then she probably thought that if a student of botany could do marketing, what's stopping her from DJing too?.``I had this ear for music as a kid,'' she explains.So, Zaima started accompanying a friend, Nadeem Sheikh, a DJ, to some of his shows. Soon, she was assisting him, and on August 19 this year, she got her own big break when Jazzmatazz, an event management company, asked her to DJ for one of their programmes at Residency Club's Scoobadoo.``Though I have done many programmes after that, the first one has remained my best to date,'' she reminisces. ``As a DJ, I make it a point to play what the crowd wants rather than what I want. However, that was one show where the crowd's and my choice of music seemed to gel - both parties wanted good unadulterated English numbers. For instance, I am not particularly fond of bhangra pop or Hindi remixes, though they are more popular and I have to play them,'' says Zaima, a permanent fixture at Scoobadoo now.Do eyebrows quirk at the sight of a girl in the DJ cabin? ``Well, yes. People do seem rather taken aback,'' she replies even as she wonders what has kept girls away from this profession for so long. ``It couldn't be late nights - many of the girls frequenting discotheques stay till the very end and Pune is quite safe,'' she shrugs.However, even for Zaima, much as she enjoys DJing, marketing as a career does take precedence. ``Some years from now, I see myself well-entrenched in the world of marketing. DJing is okay for now - it's enjoyable and gives me good money. But I don't think I will continue with it for too long, certainly not after marriage,'' she admits candidly.So what does it take to be a good DJ? ``It's not all that glamorous as it is made out to be. It's a lot of hard work - you have to keep up with the trends in music. The important thing is your ability to gauge the kind of music that is needed at that particular time by that particular crowd.'' What your body language spells is vital. ``I speak a lot to the people on the dance floor, the thing to do is to keep them on their toes even when a number is not too good. How you relate to the crowd is important - that is where your body language comes in,'' adds Zaima, the DJ with a difference. Undoubtedly.
