To the moon Read online

17 They make you dissect a live beating-heart frog in biology. (Is this a universal thing? Because it’s got to stop, really. #gross) Every country (except India) makes a Big Mac exactly the same way, and has been doing so for at least the last 30 years. And they are exactly as delicious today as they were when I had my first taste all those years ago. Meanwhile, the Maharaja Mac gives Maharajas and Big Macs a bad name.

  18 You’re left-handed and can’t write in calligraphy; shattering all your dreams of becoming an incredible artist one day. Your parents live in perpetual fear for your safety so you spend most of your free time and weekends at home. This may not be unique to international kids, but have YOU ever tried convincing your parents that casual street riots and religious police were nothing to worry about?

  19 Your classically desi parents won’t spring for an actual flute so you’re stuck playing the recorder in music class, again shattering all your dreams of becoming a world-renowned musician. (In hindsight a wise decision, mom and dad, seeing as I’m completely tone deaf and usually lip-sync at karaoke bars, shhh!) You realize over time that being the weird foreigner as a child quickly turns into a massive advantage as you grow older. Nothing impresses a college girl or university admissions officer more than a passport full of stamps and a few war stories to boot.

  20 You think hyper-colour t-shirts are the coolest thing ever. Eating out anywhere other than a major global metropolis becomes very difficult, because nothing tastes as good as the real deal. On the bright side, you get to eat some amazing local food, but you become a real snob about anything else, and that kinda sucks.

  21 Someone buys your brother an Atari for his birthday and you become obsessed with it too. You don’t really know what it means to have childhood friends, a lifelong pet, or why kids on American sitcoms freak out whenever their parents decide to sell their house.

  22 Your parents FINALLY spring for a giant whirring desktop that sounds like it’s dying every time the dial up connects. Your two least favourite questions in the world are ‘where are you from’ and ‘what’s your permanent address?’

  23 You learn BASIC in computer class. Hello geek-dome. (Remember IF, THEN, ELSE?) Living in Iran for two years amongst some of the most warm, hospitable people you’ll ever meet quickly teaches you that what you see in the news rarely gives you the real, complete picture.

  24 You don’t really know what the pound sign ‘#’ on your keypad is for. (You won’t for the next fifteen years.) Hating on America has always been a global sport, but spend a few years there and you come to understand why it truly is one of the greatest countries on earth. Except for maybe Canada. Those folks have it figured out.

  25 While your academic skills might take a dip down from the Indian learn-the-whole-world-by-rote system, you learn that it is perfectly OK to have an opinion and be yourself. You learn confidence. Live in America too long, however, and you realize it’s way too easy to lose touch with the rest of the world.

  26 You start a bullet-shell collection and sleep in the basement most nights because of the Lebanese Civil War (one night in someone else’s basement because your family misses lunchtime curfew and Yasser Arafat is there too). Okay, this one’s probably not as common... Growing up travelling your whole life has its trials and tribulations. But nothing instils as strong a sense of curiosity and adventure than experiencing how different peoples and cultures live. And if you’re lucky, that urge to discover will one day find you an amazing wife, career, and an incredible sense of accomplishment!

  And in the end, you come back home to your tiny three-bedroom apartment in the IFS colony in Mayur Vihar, Delhi, and innocently ask, ‘Where’s the rest of the place?’ and phase one of life as you know it comes to a grinding halt. Goodbye, swimming pool, adios Mercedes Benz.

  But then you think OMG (no wait, this is pre-‘OMG’), holy sh*t what a FANTASTIC opportunity to reinvent myself. I can be cool and mysterious and I finally wear CONTACT LENSES! You forget the tiny apartment and the dusty rides to school in a #322 Red DTC Bus, which I was told they keep painted red so they don’t have to constantly paint over the bloody accident stains, true story. Where you plough your way through your ‘A’ Levels at The British School (which you almost fail, damn you letter ‘z’) and then enters the drama team and changes your whole perspective on life. All those years of watching Paper Chase and dreams of becoming a criminal lawyer fade away and the curtain rises on ENTERTAINMENT! ENTERTAINMENT! ENTERTAINMENT!

  Meanwhile, across the world in Bangladesh, another story was brewing.

  Blog #04: The Husband Blog – Nowshad Rizwanullah

  I moved to India in 2005 in search of adventure. Little did I know that I would find a wife and a company to call my own in the process, but I guess fortune truly favours the bold…or at least the restless. At that point in life, I had been living in the US for six years, the longest I had lived in any single country. I was feeling stagnant and disconnected from the rest of the world, as tends to happen when you live somewhere as self-contained as the United States. Don’t get me wrong – there are few countries as extraordinary, but the predictability and routine of my life weighed heavy on me.

  After four years at Yale University and two years working for an emerging markets investment fund, I faced an important choice: accept my place in the North American corporate escalator I had so diligently worked towards my whole life, or take a chance in pursuit of a life less ordinary. Two clichés in their own way, but the answer for me was clear.

  As soon as I completed two years on my contract, I quit my job, sold my belongings, counted my savings, and bought a one-way ticket to Bombay. I gave myself 6 months to find a suitable job which would teach me the ins-and-outs of doing business in emerging India, and another 2 years or so to bump into some IIT geniuses with whom I would start a hot, new startup that would one day change the world. It seemed so simple back then.

  Bear in mind, my family is from Bangladesh, with no connection to India. Except for the incredible generosity of my college friend Sriram Lakshman, and his parents Nirmala and Lakshman Balaraman (to whom I will be eternally grateful), I had no business being in this town. My only previous experience with Bombay was transiting through the airport on the way to Dhaka for summer holidays. For those who remember what Bombay airport looked, smelled, and felt like in the ’80s and ’90s, you’d be forgiven for thinking I was slightly nuts. And yet there was something exciting brewing across the ocean, a long-awaited rebalancing of talent, wealth, respect and opportunity, and I wanted to be a part of it all.

  I had spent the last year of my job in DC helping my boss write The Emerging Markets Century, a book on the top twenty-five multinationals from emerging markets that were redefining old rules and transforming their industries. My boss at the time, Antoine van Agtmael, was a pioneer in the field, having coined the term ‘emerging markets’ while working at the IFC in the 1970s. Riding off his reputation and influence, I had the incredibly rare and good fortune of touring the factories and executive suites of some of the world’s most exciting new companies, including Samsung, Hyundai and POSCO in South Korea; TSMC, Acer, and HTC in Taiwan; Petrobras and Embraer in Brazil, and various other rising stars from the developing world. The companies I couldn’t personally visit I would engross myself in through Bloomberg research, magazine reports, and the time and patience of our portfolio managers. This included deep dives and profiles on Indian companies such as Reliance, Tata and Infosys among others, and this is when the wheels in my head started spinning.

  My desire to move to India is not something anyone could have predicted, least of all my parents, who bought a house in Long Island shortly after retirement in anticipation that their three sons would most likely choose New York as their future stomping grounds. Imagine their surprise when my older brother Razi moved to Dhaka, to be joined later by my younger brother Asif, while I landed up in India.

  While we had spent our fair share of time in the developing world – and truly loved it – we were drawn to the long-te
rm allure of Western culture and creature comforts. To the ten-year-old mind, it seemed foolish to pick dusty roads, power cuts and mosquito bites over gleaming highways, cable TV and junk food in every shape, size and flavour imaginable. By the time I reached college and had to start thinking about jobs, Europe and North America seemed like the obvious choices for building a respectable, long-term career. After all, most of the leading companies in the world at the time were based there.

  Growing up, I had given some serious thought to following my father’s footsteps with the UN or a similar international relief organization. However, by the time I reached college, the critique du jour was that the UN was a bloated, politicized and corrupt organization in desperate need of reform. Having seen the UN at work first-hand in some of the most desperate places on earth, I always found this characterization distasteful and hard to swallow. My father had spent his life housing, feeding and speaking up for refugees, and I had met many generous and dedicated civil servants through his work. But I also knew there was a kernel of truth in these allegations, which my father himself would often voice, and I decided I didn’t have the interest to enter such an environment.

  And so, as my college years wound down, I jumped head-first into interviewing for predictable consulting and finance jobs. My lack of real passion for these fields must have showed at the time, as dozens of interviews with dozens of firms led nowhere. This would prove to be a blessing in disguise, as Antoine was a bit late in looking for his research associate, and I was a little late finding a job. I’m not a very spiritual person, but I do believe in Karma. I don’t know how Antoine feels about this, but I believe it was Karma that found me that job with him, and set into motion the series of events that find me writing this chapter today.

  To go into much more detail about my past would take too much time, and you’ve not picked up this book to read my story. But I would be remiss if I didn’t share two more details: 1) the brief version of how I met Malini and MissMalini; and 2) the lessons I’ve learned that I believe apply to anyone looking to find their purpose and place in life.

  I met Malini thanks to a last-minute drop-out and two very insistent friends. This was in August of 2007, and Phase I of my India strategy was working out mostly to plan. After three harrowing months of job hunting with the aid of an MTNL dial-up modem, a rapidly dwindling bank account (who knew Mumbai was so expensive!), and a fortuitous introduction from my Yale classmate Ryan Floyd, I landed a job at the overseas automobiles division of Mahindra & Mahindra. That first year was spent mostly in expat circles, by virtue of the fact that M&M had just initiated a program that recruited five fresh graduates from the US and brought them to work in India for two years. I was sharing an apartment with this first batch of recruits, through whom I made my first real friends in the city. Although we lived a comfortable life, I eventually moved out with one of those recruits, Mike Delfs, as we both looked to broaden our horizons and experience the side of India for which we had travelled all those miles. Mike had recently stumbled on a social club that organized outings every Friday, called the Friday Club. One fine Friday, Mike and another Friday Club member, Gaargi, were pre-gaming at our apartment when a spot on the club list for that night unexpectedly opened. I was already pretty set on meeting my friends, but Gaargi and Mike insisted I join them, and promptly added my name to the list. I made a last-minute change of plans, and that split-second decision would forever change my life.

  Malini and I shared an instant connection, but I kept my distance that first night on the strict instructions that creepy dudes would not be invited back for future events. Over the next several weeks, between long social media chats and my near-religious attendance of all future FC events, it became clear that Malini was the kind of one-in-a-million person you meet very rarely in life. The kind of person whose energy, enthusiasm and charisma could instantly draw you in, while her kindness and generosity made you never want to leave her side. Before long, we were dating. Eight months later, when I got into Harvard Business School, there was no question that I would do what was necessary to keep us together. Malini started her hobby blog while I was at HBS, and as with anything she puts her mind to, it was clear it would be a success. I promptly returned to Mumbai after graduation in 2010 to work with Nomura, a Japanese investment bank, but I had an inkling that Phase II of my India plan had finally begun to take shape, albeit in an unexpected manner. I would have never guessed a Bollywood entertainment site is how I would eventually expend my entrepreneurial energy, but there was never any doubt that riding Malini’s coattails would be the most exciting way to do so. Two years later I joined Malini and Mike in the business full-time, and the three of us have been at it since.

  If I were to look back at the story of my life, there are a few recurring themes that I believe were key to my happiness and success. First and foremost, travelling the world and eventually attending a liberal arts university taught me the importance of keeping an open and curious mind. Growing up, the path to ‘success’ is too often narrowly defined for us by well-intentioned parents and counsellors. But if my story proves anything, it’s that life’s joys can come from the most unexpected places. The more you push yourself out of your comfort zone, the more you allow yourself to grow and discover what truly fuels your passions. It’s crazy to think you know what happiness means by your early twenties, when you are expected to make so many important life decisions. Take the time to explore, to experiment, and remember – the world is a wondrous place filled with opportunity and excitement, if only you give it a chance to unfold.

  The second recurring theme in my life is something I’ve mentioned earlier, and that is the power of Karma. Early on in life I made a simple observation: that the more ‘good’ things I did, the more ‘good’ things came back to me. This could be for other people, for myself, or for no one in particular. Conversely, if I ever did something I regretted, or felt guilty about, it would find its way back to me in one way or another. So, the lesson here is simple, and more important than anything I’ve learned at Yale or Harvard: be good to yourself, your family, your friends, your readers, your fans, your customers, your investors, your colleagues, your employees, your partners, and everyone else in your life. I am a 100 per cent convinced that most relationships and businesses fail because somewhere along the way, someone simply forgot to be good to someone else, and eventually paid the price in whatever dramatic, snowballed form it ultimately took. I believe that I found Malini and the incredible people that are building MissMalini with us today because somewhere along the way, we all did something good to deserve each other.

  The third and final lesson is to believe in yourself. I look back today at some of the risks I’ve taken, some of the decisions I’ve made and some of the situations I put myself in, and still cannot believe I pulled it off. This is not to brag, but to say that we don’t give ourselves enough credit for what we can achieve, even after we’ve achieved it! I am willing to bet that all our heroes and icons could look back at a consequential time in their lives and still not believe how they made it through. We tend to think that these people are superlative, and innately wired for success in a way that we are not. Maybe they are. But we would have never found out if they weren’t willing to take a chance and place an audacious bet on themselves. No matter where MissMalini Entertainment takes us (and we still have a long road ahead of us), I sleep easy at night knowing that a lot of good people are giving it their very best shot.

  There you have it. Nearly four decades of travelling the world, staying curious, trying to be good and believing. And that’s exactly how I plan to spend the next forty. Who’s with me?

  A word about the In-Laws

  All my life I tried to image what the family I would marry into would be like. I pictured big family gatherings, the kind I had growing up where all the grown-ups sat around drinking tea while the kids got up to no good. Needless to say that when I met the Rizwanullahs, I got all that and more. Mama and Baba (Muhammad and Nasrin Rizwanullah
) are two of the kindest, most easy-going parents I’ve met. While we all expected a little inter-family friction owing to the religious differences in our upbringing, I am happy to report that I’ve had zero issues with my new fam jam. Also, I ended up with two hysterical brothers-in-law, Razi and Asif, who crack me up constantly, and a beautiful sister-in-law Nameera (high-five Jaa!). I wear the ‘bhabhi-ni’ tag I was given by Asif with great pride.

  THE RIZWANULLAHS

  When we came to know Malini as our son’s fiancée, we did not know about her incredible journey which made her famous with the household name MissMalini. Her move to Mumbai at quite an early age away from her parents, her various media/entertainment careers that led to the establishment of her own blogging enterprise is an amazing journey and very inspiring for women not only in India but internationally. After Malini and Nowshad got married, we had more insight into MissMalini. When Nowshad left his job, and joined Malini in a joint venture, we were not sure whether it was a good move for him to leave the job. But the more we come to know about their enterprise, the more we are convinced that they are doing something creative, which they enjoy and has been quite successful in engaging a team of some 30-40 talented young people in a range of promotional and media activities. We hope their hard work will bring them more fame and fortune.

  Blog #05: Oh, The Drama!

  My first real brush with ‘celebrity’ probably happened in the second year of my A Levels back in 1998 at The British School. I was somehow selected to direct the school’s entry for Youthquake, an inter-school competition that everyone took extremely seriously.

  Our theme that year for the play was ‘Wrong Number’, and while all the other schools went with the classic cross-connection-telephone-call plot, I decided to switch it up and make the play about a series of blind dates that go ‘wrong’ until the lead – played by a delicious-looking boy named Jamal – exits stage left head-over-heels in love with a decidedly gay waiter played by Sushant Mukherjee (my global diplobrat twin whom you’ve heard all about in another blog).