Dial ‘D’ for ‘DJ Devil’


For Devan Thuppali, the General Manager of OHI Electronics, pastime is a paying business, as Mehre Alam discovers

Did you ever hear of someone called DJ Devil? A Muscat-based “devil”! Ask the DJ buffs of the capital city. They’ll tell you who this “devil” is! He is someone called Devan Thuppali. In his free time, he is DJ Devil. In the office hours, he is the General Manager of OHI Electronics.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Thuppali says of his pastime, and laughs his heart out as we get started. He’s just back to the office. The 12 o’clock commitment is safe. So we begin the chat.

What are his main hobbies? Need he spell it out any clearer? The penpusher insists. “My main hobby is music. Deejaying is my passion. I do a lot of shows in Oman — quite high profile shows, like for example the ABA Ball (the American British Academy Ball). I have been deejaying for this event for the last two years.” (For the uninitiated, DJ stands for disc jockey, an initial made famous by radio presenters who chose music compilations to be broadcast on the air; today they are better known off the air at live venues.).

Thuppali is now a veteran of many a theme show like Valentine’s, Halloween and New Year’s Eve. And, he has deejayed at ‘A’ list private parties in the homes of Muscat’s elite.
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. Thuppali’s deejaying foray stems from this very premise. There was a time, he says, when he felt frustrated, unable to locate a suitable pub to take his family to. That’s when, and how, the deejay (DJ) in him was born.

“We started mulling organising parties for like-minded people and families. There used to be this restaurant at the corniche called Al Inshirah. It specialised in Thai-Chinese cuisine,” Thuppali recalls. (“Tell me how long have you been here?” Thuppal suddenly pauses to test the reporter, and then goes on). “The restaurant had a huge party hall with wooden floor. It was ideal for parties. I started hosting theme parties for like-minded people with the help of Subroto, the then manager of the hotel. Thus began my foray into deejaying. And it went on like that for over three years.”

Three years into deejaying and Thuppal started getting calls for professional performances. “Now, this is a paying hobby. It’s not just fun. I get paid. I get serious money for this,” he asserts. No wonder he went on to purchase some serious deejaying equipment. One look at the interiors of his house and you can spot the DJ in him — DJ Devil, to be more precise!

As a DJ with a greying beard, how does he ward off competition from the younger lot? “I spend a lot of time downloading things, getting updated. When you are doing shows, you can’t keep playing old numbers. You’ve got to be up-to-date, especially in view of the kind of crowd you entertain today. Though I may look old, I play for a young crowd,” he emphasises.

But there is more to Thuppal’s staying power. “Luckily for me, as far as DJs are concerned, I have come across a lot of Omani DJs,” he reveals. (Are you listening, expats?). “Strangely, the local DJs do not have a good mix. If you look at the crowd I have been playing for, you have the youngsters; you have those in the mid-30s, and those in the 40s and 50s. I tend to have a fantastic mix in the sense that I can satisfy everybody’s need in a crowd.”

What about his other pastime? “I play a little bit of golf. My brush with golf started recently, thanks to the OER CEO Golf. This event was a kind of pedestal for me to get into the groove as far as golf is concerned. To be honest, I am quite regular with my golf now. I am there at the golf range almost every time I get a chance to play on the weekends (no tournaments because I do not have a handicap).”

But how does he manage to eke out time to do all that. “It’s not all that difficult. It’s all about managing the 24 hours of a day properly. That’s it.” And he has a “memo” to give to the management mandarins: “Take your pastime seriously!” Point taken?