To the moon Read online

  Finally, at my next place of work, Go92.5 FM (now known as 94.3 Radio One), we set a trap. We pretended to have a contest and rigged it so he won the ‘prize’ and asked him to come to the station to collect it. He came, oblivious and totally unprepared for the plain-clothes police officer who was waiting for him. The policeman dragged Y by the ears – yes, just like they do in Bollywood movies – to Tardeo Police Station for interrogation. Y’s response to the questions was that I had encouraged him by answering his phone calls. I vehemently protested, ‘He’s lying! He doesn’t have my phone number!’ To which he replied, ‘No, you always pick up the phone when I call the radio station.’

  Um. Please take a moment to let your brain compute that sentence. It took me several. Also, that was my job, bro. Where were you, TrueCaller, when I needed you?

  Y was around thirty-five years old and, of course still lived at home. All his ‘lunch’ money was being donated to Archies for my regular supply of teddy bears and musical love cards.

  Anyway, long story not-so-short, his ‘mother’, a sweet Parsi aunty in glasses and a flowery kaftan, was summoned to the police station. She looked upset, but also had an air of resignation about her, like mujhe toh pata tha, nalayak kuch aise hi gul khila raha hoga. Translation: I knew you must’ve been up to something like this, you good for nothing son of a… Without so much as a pause, she gave Mr Y a resounding slap across the face with a forehand that would put Roger Federer to shame. Total thappad ki goonj moment, just like when Dilip Kumar slaps Dr Dang across the face in his jail cell, in the 1986 movie Karma – and it echoes dramatically throughout the land.

  And there you have it. Stalker goes bye-bye. Yet more proof that an aunty with a strong forehand is all you need to change the world.

  Blog #18: How Bollywood Taught Me Everything

  As you can surely see, Bollywood is everywhere. Especially in my universe. In fact, this blog is about the ten practical life hacks Bollywood has taught us all along the way. Some of this has been written by the wonderful Rashmi Daryanani, one the most ‘filmy’ and hilarious writers on Team MissMalini.

  ‘Main apni favourite hoon.’ Film: Jab We Met

  Translation: I am my favourite.

  You must learn to love yourself (because you are awesomesauce) before you can love anyone else. If you love yourself, you’ll know what you deserve and won’t settle for anything less. You’ll also be less emotionally dependant on one person for all your happiness, which helps take a lot of pressure off any relationship.

  ‘Bade bade deshon mein, aisi chhoti chhoti baatein hoti rahti hain.’ Film: Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge

  Translation: Small incidents such as these keep happening in big cities.

  Don’t sweat the small stuff. Stand your ground for the important things, but let the tiny issues go. Pick your battles.

  ‘Mere bete ayenge.’ Film: Karan Arjun

  Translation: My sons will come.

  Resilience and patience are the currency of karma. Believe in something long enough and the universe will make it so. Perhaps just shy of bringing your murdered sons back in another life to avenge their death. Just shy…

  ‘S-O-R-R-Y, sorry. Hum bure toh hain par itne bhi nahin. Thode achhe bhi hain.’ Film: Roja

  Translation: S-O-R-R-Y, sorry. I’m bad, but not that bad. I’m a little good too.

  But to answer your question, Justin Bieber, it’s never too late to say you’re sorry. No matter what you’ve done, no matter how long it takes to get a chance to own up to your mistakes and however long it is before the person you have wronged will give you the opportunity. You may not be forgiven, never assume that, but always say you’re sorry. It’s never too late to try.

  (PS. JB, I’m sorry too, I’ve recently moved on to Ed Sheeran and ‘Shape of You’. But you’ll always be my song of the year 2016.)

  ‘Teja main hoon, mark idhar hain.’ Film: Andaaz Apna Apna (My favourite movie of ALL TIME)

  Translation: I’m Teja, the mark is here!

  Always leave a mark. My goal in life is to become unforgettable. What’s yours?

  ‘Aaj Sunday ka din hai, din mein daaru pine ka din.’ Film: Chalbaaz

  Translation: It’s Sunday, a day for drinking during the day.

  Seriously, I cannot stress the pivotal role Sunday brunches have played in my life. From de-compressing to networking, daytime drinking is the best!

  ‘Goals paane ki khushi tabhi mehsoos hoti hai…jab usey kisi ke saath share kar sako.’ Film: Wake Up Sid

  Translation: You’ll only be happy about achieving your goals when you have someone to share it with.

  You’ve heard the saying, ‘It’s lonely at the top,’ right? What if you didn’t climb that ladder alone? What if it was a penthouse party where everyone who ever helped you on your way was invited?

  ‘Oye hoye chhod chhaad ke apne Saleem ki gali, Anarkali disco chali.’ Film: Housefull 2

  Translation: Leaving behind the lane of her beloved Saleem, Anarkali went to the disco.

  Every once in a while, break out of your comfort zone.

  ‘Ek baar jo maine commitment kardi, uske baad toh mein khud ki bhi nahi sunta.’ Film: Wanted

  Translation: Once I make a commitment, I don’t even listen to myself.

  Simple. Always keep your promises.

  ‘Success ke peeche mat bhaago. excellence, excellence ka peecha karo, success jhak maar ke tumhare peeche ayegi.’

  Film: Three Idiots

  Translation: Don’t chase success, chase excellence, and success will then run after you.

  Don’t start out wanting to be rich and famous. Find a passion, find your calling, work your ass off...and bam! You’ll be a legend. And in the 900+ blogs we post a month, I somehow missed this gem, ‘Calling someone an “idiot” means confessing to them, “I Do Ishq Only Tumse”.’ Best.

  Blog #19: You Are Now Live on Air

  In case you didn’t know, commercial radio in Bombay started out with six radio stations, all owned by major newspapers or media houses. This happened because the government, in all its wisdom, decided to turn the acquisition of a radio licence into a private auction. Each party put in a bid (as high as they could muster) to get a licence. As a result, the bids shot up by crores, in double digits. Now with a population of millions you’d think there’d be a market for all kinds of different radio programming, right? Not so much. The English stations were doing about 250,000 listeners a month while the big fat Bollywood stations close to a whopping 9 million. Quite rapidly, all the stations switched over to banging out the best (and worst) of commercial Bollywood music. And as you might agree, they all started to sound the same.

  The one last bastion of half-Hindi, half English radio hope was Go92.5 FM, which is where I wanted to be. I started out doing afternoons, but was soon promoted to evening drive with the most fabulous co-host of all time – Jaggu! He eventually moved on to the breakfast show Good Morning Mumbai and formed the legendary duo ‘Jaggu & Tarana’ and the evening drive became my three-hour solo act called Horn Ok Please.

  JAGGU & TARANA

  Radio hosts

  We saw it happen from the time of the Big Bang of the MissMalini universe. We witnessed the beginning of the column, the blog and website all the way to you becoming the maverick social media Jedi who turned entertainment on its head.

  The ability to know what people will want and using the first-mover advantage koi aap se seekhe! The beauty of your process is the way you have handled creative expansion by adding to quality, not reducing it. Going forward, never, ever give that up. We’d love for you to go more international and see you do more production and intellectual property creation rather than just content.

  There is no way for us to tell you what we think your next opportunity is because you will see it before us. Knowing that you will be on it before most, stay true to your quality, do your thinking the way you have from the time of your personal Big Bang.

  With so much happening in your universe, what we’d like most
is for you to continue being you, because you’re so damn good at it.

  Horn Ok Please changed my life. I spent 6 to 9 p.m., Monday to Saturday, in a cosy little studio on the ninth floor of a building in Tardeo and invented my own magical ride. I’d take requests, talk about music and dispense random trivia about weird things from a website called straightdope.com, which by the way is still an amazing read. I covered everything from ‘Can you get addicted to chapstick?’ to ‘Did Mahatma Gandhi sleep between twelve-year-old virgins?’ Not kidding, the answers are on the website, go look.

  I’d also comment on things that caught my attention in pop culture, play tons of little radio games, take callers (enter stalker as per blog #18) and – my personal favourite – on Fridays I did something called ‘Flirty & 7:30’. This involved picking a ‘bachelorette’ who would introduce herself on air and three guys who would be short-listed to try to impress her in 30 seconds each. Then she’d pick one (or none) and we’d send them on an all-expense-paid date. Want to hear the kicker? One couple who met on my show even got married. *cue karmic mic drop*

  I also did another Sunday afternoon slot. It had a more chilled-out vibe with a rather lonely studio, as I would be the only one at work. I started something called ‘Going Solo’. This is where I would invite listeners to join my very rudimentary ‘club’ on the Go92.5 website and then I’d make fortnightly plans to meet with all of them. We’d go bowling or watch a movie, sometimes even a salsa class! It was heaps of fun and I met some fantastic people. The club was open to anyone who wanted to join and yet we managed to keep the creepies away. And I have a theory about this, like the kind in A Beautiful Mind: Everyone has the ability, intrinsically, to behave in a kind and acceptable fashion, but often their social conditioning or environment flips a switch in their minds that makes them behave in some terribly odd and disturbing ways. If, however, you create an environment of happy normalcy, a socially challenged person may also find it easy to mimic his/her surroundings and behave in an acceptable manner while interacting with a group.

  My point though (social experiment aside) is this; all of this was happening pre-Tinder and Facebook. When we did things the ‘old’ way, in person, sans swiping right, but with shades of what has turned into ‘social media’ today. But guess what? Technically, these forms of interactions were social media too. It’s just like how we used to listen to music on cassette tapes and then came iTunes; same purpose, different tools. Although I didn’t know it back then, I was already training for the job I have today! How cool is that?

  PS. I must give props to model Pia Trivedi, who somewhere between 2006 and 2007 told me about Facebook. She said, ‘Have you tried this thing, Facebook? It’s fun. You should try it. You’ll like it.’ And boy-oh-boy, did I LIKE it.

  Blog #20: A Few Good Men-tors

  During my radio years, I had the incredibly good fortune of having not one, not two, but FOUR amazing mentors and they taught me some incredible things.

  Tariq Ansari, then managing director of Mid-Day and the visionary behind the commercial radio boom in Bombay, taught me that radio is an intimate and personal experience. While your show might be broadcast to millions of people in the city, even the four people listening to the radio in the same car will experience the programme in their own unique ways. Which is why, the best way to host a radio show is to imagine that you are speaking to just one person. In fact, imagine your best friend, be your most enthusiastic self and take it away. This was a lesson that eventually formed the core of MissMalini’s identity and is the simple secret to how I created a voice on the internet. It’s the same logic: There might be billions of people out there scouring the web, but when they’re coming to your blog, they’re coming for a one-on-one with you. THIS is the lesson that gave the blog the identity for which it is known. Thank you, TMan! I am forever in your debt.

  TARIQ ANSARI

  Former MD, Mid-Day

  Not a great one for advice but if I were to volunteer something it would go like this:

  Deep waters make you a better swimmer

  Strong winds make you a better sailor

  The friends that appear in hardship are true fellow travellers

  Without night there is no day

  Without sadness there is no joy

  You are a child of the sunshine

  Learn well the lessons of the moonlight

  Then you will conquer the universe.

  Rajesh Tahil was the then station head, and the most chilled- out boss EVER. He was calm when dealing with everything. In all the years that I knew him, I never once saw him lose his temper. He was also the master of content. He always knew what would work even before we tried it and, the best thing was, he was always willing to try out an idea even if we weren’t sure it would work. If it didn’t, he’d brush it off and move right along, but mostly, true to his instincts, it worked. Tahil (as we all called him) taught me to believe in taking chances. In a way, he taught me to take a chance on me. Also, his wife Genesia is eerily my life twin. She’s also a Gemini, shares the same birthdate as me, 26 May, worked at Channel [v] and when she left MTV India online, I didn’t realize I was hired to fill her very competent shoes running the Romance & Sexuality channel! And get this, she had a show on the same station on the radio and has a blog called bookofgenesia.wordpress.com. Goosebumps much?

  RAJESH TAHIL

  Former Station Head, Go92.5 FM

  I first worked with Malini in 1999, when she with one of India’s first city-specific websites for Mid-Day (chalomumbai.com). She was the kind of dynamo who brought an incredible level of energy and passion to what she did, the sort that elevated everything else around it as well. She went on to become a popular radio host and we worked together again at Go92.5, which I then headed. She not only hosted a daily show but also handled its busy website in her spare time.

  I soon went on to become publisher at Mid-Day, and in a chat with the editor (Aakar Patel), we agreed that we needed new voices to write about Mumbai’s social scene, which in the newspapers then was mostly SoBo (i.e., both South Bombay and So Boring). Malini was soon writing an early, and extremely popular, version of what would eventually take shape as MissMalini.com

  The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. MissMalini became one of the first real success stories from online publishing/entertainment in India. She was popular across media, across platforms and across geographies.

  As MissMalini goes forward, my advice to her is to never let people believe they have figured her out. Retain the ability to surprise and reinvent, so that you’re always miles ahead of the pack. You can create a brand that is enduring, in a business where everything is fleeting. And that would be a true measure of the success you deserve. All the very best.

  Vishnu Athreya, then programming director, taught me to keep it crisp. Brevity, he always maintained, is the secret sauce to keeping your audience interested and wanting more. He also taught me patience. I’ll tell you how. This is an embarrassing story, but I’ve been meaning to tell him for years!

  When I worked at the station, I would constantly badger him with random work-related questions through the day, while he would obviously be in the middle of putting an important pitch together. I think I did it partly out of excitement and partly because I wanted him to know I was working very hard. He would always say, ‘Just one second,’ finish what he was typing and then say, ‘Ok, haan, tell me.’ He did this every time, no matter how many inane questions I asked. Now, I’m at the receiving end of questions from thirty-five enthu-cutlets, who all have at least one question a day for me. I give you a very grateful student in the lesson of patience! So, thank you, Mr Athreya.

  There was also this one time when I had started hosting my show entirely in Hindi (remember the 9 million listener target?). Well, I did alright I thought, but I was once trying to relay an on-set anecdote about Aishwarya Rai in the movie Guru and ended up saying, ‘Aishwarya Rai cycle chala rahi thi aur woh deewar se raam ho gayi!’ I think that was the hardest
I have ever heard Vishnu laugh at any of his on-air talent. And I suppose rightfully so! (Chetan Kapoor, #raamhogayi.)

  Shariq Patel, station head. While we were at the station, there was a policy of identifying the top talent (creatively or execution-wise) and putting them on a sort of ‘honour roll’. Shariq gave me immense confidence in my own abilities when he identified me to be part of that list. We got stock options, were consulted for big-ticket items and were closely involved in their execution. He also taught me how to be high-energy in the workplace. The Red Bull kind because he was always ON. Also, anything I know about cricket is courtesy him.

  SHARIQ PATEL

  Former station head, 94.3 Radio One

  I have been proud to witness Malini’s growth from 2004, when we were colleagues at what was then Go92.5 FM.

  She was the host of the drive show and was always experimenting with interesting ways of connecting with the audience. Apart from her show, she was also responsible for the station’s website and would take great pride in making sure it was updated, not just with show information but also a platform for fellow listeners to interact with each other. Mind you, this was well before social media as we now know it. She had this knack of creating a vibe and building a tribe around the various activities we would do around her show, and on the website. For example, we took a cute on-air idea of connecting singles on air and managed to take it on ground as a speed-dating event.