To the moon Page 8
Kumar Shah aka Kumi – yup, I’m telling the whole world we call you that now – has taught me that there are still a few good single men left out there and that the biggest mistake we make is looking for something that fits our conventional checklist when all you need in life isn’t someone who’s ‘perfect’, just someone who’s perfect for you. Ladies, if you want an intro, hit me up! @MissMalini
Mike Melli and Sanskruti Mehta Melli: Mike has been there since the MM HQ was literally just my sofa. My favourite thing about Sans and him is an unwavering desire to change the world – one intolerance at a time. Plus, they’ve adopted a puppy outside our office. Yay Zelda! Mike has taught me that (if you’re lucky like me) there will be some people in your life who want only the best for you and your dreams. Trust them as much as they love you.
PS. Mike also worked relentlessly to get me the perfect agent (Anuj Bahri from Red Ink Agency) and publisher because he knew how much I’ve always wanted to write this book. #HarperCollins #NuffSaid
Naveen and Geetu Wadhera: All I can say is #couplegoals! Geetu has always given me major arts and crafts envy and I can’t get over the fact that Naveen started the a Capella band Penn Masala. How cool is that? Naveen has taught me that being a grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t play anymore, just play responsibly!
Sid and Neera Shah: What I love about these two is their ability to make any occasion feel that much more special by acknowledging the moment in meaningful ways. They are insanely fun, hilarious and all-round superstars, who’ve made me wiser by teaching me that in order to live life right, you must appreciate the people you love, make all your experiences count and cherish every memory. #SidShahLive PS. Sid is the only person I know who willingly deleted his Facebook account to de-clutter his life. We make up it for it, however, by flooding him daily on our WhatsApp group.
WhatsApp One on Ones
More wonderful people I have met over the years and grown to admire and love a great deal. We aren’t in any WhatsApp groups together and may not even run in the same circles, but I know they will always have my back.
Elton Fernandez: Elton is the most charismatic and quirky person you will ever meet. Aside from being a phenomenal hair and makeup artist he has a pretty deep understanding of the human condition. He has taught me that you must live your life unabashedly and never apologize for who you are, because somebody definitely thinks you are fantastic!
Harpreet Baweja: I mean, we literally call him ‘Happy’! Besides being an adventure junkie and party animal, Happy has taught me that you first need to take time out and find out who YOU are, before you let anyone convince you who you’re not.
Roger Williams: Have you ever met someone who’s part-teddy-bear and part-badass? If not, you need to meet Roger or Maha Roger as we call him. Roger has taught me that friendship is the biggest high of all.
Nonita Kalra: Probably the most elegant person in publishing I know, Nonita has always had an air of Audrey Hepburn sophistication. When I was new on the ‘Page 3’ scene, she was the first to come up and talk to me and taught me that your coolness won’t diminish by being kind to the new kid on the block.
Zenith Shah: Zenith and I spend the majority of our conversations talking about outer space and the possibility of life in other galaxies. He has taught me that it is crucial to respect our place in the cosmos and that the only way to live is to be a supernova. (Also that guys like girls who wear sneakers.)
And one for the little people…
Noa Eappen: My youngest BFF to date has shown me that children know friendship better than anybody else. That if you approach children with affection and attention, they will give you their hearts in an instant. PS. I’ll play Barbie monopoly with you any day of the week, Miss Giggles.
*I encourage you to try this exercise at home. Think about all your closest friends/family and what each one of them has taught you. Then tell them and say thank you #payitforward
Of course, these days everybody has those handful of WhatsApp groups that suddenly explode in the middle of the night in a flurry of messages, memes and 4 a.m. selfies. I’ve always marvelled at it, the proximity this brilliant, billion-dollar app has created. Even for those who are time zones apart. It’s a virtual party where people check in and out but never leave…a more evolved version of Facebook, I guess. Here people prefer keeping their circles small and pictures more private. It is the one place we’ve finally figured out how to have an intimate and recurring friendship, even as we drift slowly apart in the chaos of our digitally cluttered lives, just like the ever-expanding universe.
And, as I contemplate what I’ve learnt from my ‘virtual inner circle’ that in reality only exists as miles and miles of code, on a cloud, somewhere on the world-wide web, I realize I’ve learnt that there is great solace to be found in the knowledge that even when you are completely alone in a room by yourself, someone definitely (yup, you can even check who) heard/read what you said on WhatsApp.
‘Because…we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet...I mean, what does any one life mean? But in a marriage [and I believe equally true in friendship], you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things...all of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying, your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ – Shall We Dance
This concept of finding a ‘witness’ is something my friend Ashish Sajnani and I talk about often. I sincerely hope you find yours too.
SECTION 3: 0 TO BOMBAY
Blog #01: The Wonder Years
But wait, I just realized I never told you how I got here. As in, life as I know it. So, here’s the sort-of abridged version of 0 to 22 and hopefully this will explain all the key questions you may have about me like, ‘Why do you have an accent?’ and ‘Do you love Mexican food?’ (Don’t even get me started.)
I am a ‘diplobrat’. That’s when your parents are in the foreign services and you get a free VVIP ride around the world! And if you happen to be the ambassador’s kids, they throw in a Mercedes Benz and a swimming pool, sometimes even a tennis court, with every house. This, by the way, was setting me up for a major reality check about seventeen years from launch, but more on that in a bit…
I asked my mom via WhatsApp what the right chronology was and this is what she sent me:
Mom: Mallo, you were born on 26 May 1977 [thanks, mom, I got that part!] and I took you back to Mogadishu, Somalia, as a one year old. We went to Bonn, Germany, in 1978 and then to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1981 till 1984, and you went to The British school in Delhi for a year. Papa stayed back and then he was posted to Athens, Greece, from 1985–88. We went to Ivory Coast, West Africa, from 1989–92 and Beni went to Bulgaria. We came to Delhi and you went to college. Beni returned to Delhi in 1995 in September after retirement. You left for Mumbai 1999 and Shalini got married in 2000. So, you came to Delhi for a short time. We were in Delhi in 1984 as fighting was going on in Beirut and families came to India via Cyprus on a small boat and took an Air India flight from Dubai to Delhi.
The trajectory of my travels went from Allahabad (for the first six months of my life) where I was born – high-five, Mr Bachchan! – to Mogadishu, Somalia, till I was one, all of which was pretty uneventful to my knowledge. Although my sister says they had to pick out bugs from the bread before they ate it, I don’t know if she is just trying to creep me out. Then, it was off to Bonn in 1978 (when it was still the capital of Germany) till age four, where I learnt how to speak fluent German, of which I sadly now only remember a popular children’s poem about a duck.
lle meine Entchen
Schwimmen auf dem See,
Schwimmen auf dem See,
Köpfchen in das Wasser,
Schwänzchen in die Höh.
(Translation underwhelming, I assure you.)
We were in Beirut, Lebanon, till I was seven, which turned out to be supremely hectic. I mean I
was just about five when the drama started. ‘The Siege of Beirut’ in the summer of 1982, when the United Nations ceasefire, well, ceased to exist. This meant we were trapped slap-bang in the middle of a civil war. But from a five-year-old’s perspective, things tend to be a lot more one-dimensional, I guess?
Civil war to me meant we all got to sleep together on mattresses in the hallway every night, or in the basement like one giant slumber party! In the morning, we would run to our rooms to see who could collect the most bullet shells that had come piercing through the now shattered balcony windows (I think we still have some of those somewhere). The streets were littered with actual bombshells, wedged into pavements and countless vehicles that had gone up in flames, leaving behind rusted car-shaped skeletons in charred paint.
My most vivid memory however is of a 50,000-piece puzzle my family and I used to work on together every night, after dinner. You know the kind, two majestic horses frozen in an impossibly elegant pose for all eternity. One morning (after collecting my bullet shells), I walked into the living room to see that it had been blown to smithereens from the impact of a nearby bombshell. I was not pleased about that. The very next day we heard a rumble and ran to the balcony to witness the entire road in front of our building landslide into the basketball court of the American School in front of us. The impact of the tanks crossing over day after day had finally taken its toll.
We were evacuated shortly after that, via a small boat to Cyprus (now that would have been a selfie for the archives!) followed by an Air India flight from Dubai to Delhi. And although I think the stress is what contributed to my father’s diabetes, we all escaped largely unscathed. In fact, since we were ‘evacuees’, I even got to attend the American School in Delhi for a year, which normally you weren’t allowed to without one foreign parent back in the day.
We stayed on in India for a year and I attended Junior Raghubir Singh Modern School; no memorable memories there. I mean, how do you top escaping a war-torn country, right? Next we moved to Athens, Greece, in 1985 where I attended the American Community School till I was eleven – and where I was obviously all about the playground, the beach, visiting the Acropolis, my pet tortoise and a month-long cruise to Crete and Corfu. Sadly, the concept of LIVING in Greece and the romance of sauntering down uneven cobblestone streets were lost on me back then, so I’m dying to go back now.
There are just a couple of major instances that come to mind aside from the happy shiny ones. One, when in my third grade, the Greek teacher refused to believe that my father was the Indian ambassador and made some surprisingly racist innuendo. What lady? ‘Third World’ countries have diplomats too, ok! #TrumpMuch? As far as I remember, I was also the only brown kid in class. Oh, then there was the time I was playing with Barbies with my Jewish BFF and amongst my toys was a dismantled rakhi – one piece of which was a swastika. I recall very quickly and animatedly explaining to a disgusted fellow nine-year-old that it wasn’t what it looked like (oh God no!) and reassembled the rakhi in front of her in record time to prove it. She nodded, shrugged and was cool about the whole thing. Meanwhile, I consider that my first contribution to the foreign services. Funny the things you remember from your childhood, aren’t they?
*FYI, I later learnt that the Indian swastika and the Nazi swastika’s arms face in the opposite direction. In case you ever have to explain this to your Jewish friends.
Blog #02: You Talkin’ To Me?
It was back again to India till I was thirteen years of age. I attended Modern School, Barakhamba, where the Republic Day Parade was my favourite thing ever. And, in a school play, I played an evil Cinderella who cons the prince into marrying her – which I must confess I enjoyed very much. (No iPad you see.)
The other thing you should know about Modern School, Barakhamba, is that nobody messed with anyone in that blue uniform. It was everyone’s off-campus outfit of choice as well. I remember thinking we were all very ‘pink ladies’ from the movie Grease (lightening) at the time (just in blue). The girls would safety-pin their skirts up higher once they got out of class and the boys would un-tuck their shirts and ruffle their hair. Something I recently learnt Shah Rukh Khan likes to do as soon as they yell, ‘pack up!’ on set. So, hey, don’t judge. (The ruffle, not the skirt.) I also distinctly recall two things that forever cemented in my mind the concept of ‘thug life’ in Indian schools.
In the seventh grade we decided to ape the graduating class and wrote all over each other’s uniforms on the last day of the school year. This, in hindsight, was probably a bad decision since we weren’t in fact graduating. The school principal, a rather ironically named Mrs Gandhi – who doubled as the History teacher and liked to sing her lessons – felt the suitable punishment for this idiocy was a forehand slap across the face for everybody (they were still allowed to do that back then #corporalpunishment) starting with all the boys. One of my classmates, Rohan, had his glasses fly across the assembly hall upon impact (ruffling quite a few pigeons). I was just petrified but never actually earned a slap, early advantages of being a girl I suppose? #BulletDodged
One day, while waiting in line to fill my water bottle at the water fountain, a boy came up and pinched my cheek. I was so shocked I reeled a few steps backwards. I think he was equally surprised because he thought I was someone else, but then instead of apologizing he started to laugh and so did all his friends. I was so embarrassed and upset I went crying to my elder brother Deepak’s math class. On the way, some other kid told me the name and section number of the boy who had pinched me. I appeared in the doorway, sobbing, and told my brother what had happened. My brother instantly bolted up, signalled four of his friends, who immediately got up too, nodded at the math teacher (a quirky Sardar named Mr Singh) and there was absolutely no question (teachers included) about what was about to happen to this boy. He was dragged kicking and screaming from his class to mine to apologize for his transgression. I was horrified watching him get beaten up so badly. Did the punishment fit the crime? I don’t know.
But like I said, #thuglife, and thanks for always having my back, bro!
Next stop? West Africa! Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Cote D’Ivoire. From 1992 till I just about hit eighteen, I had the most phenomenal time at The International Community School of Abidjan, possibly my four favourite teenage years. Also, where I got deeply addicted to coloured kajal pencils that I would buy from the local tresh-ville market every week with my mom. I got my first phone – a chunky landline in my bedroom. It was a HUGE deal for late-night conspiring with my Korean best friend, In-Hye.
This was also around the time when I discovered Star magazine and pull-out celebrity posters of which I had several plastered all over my walls. Including those of Tom Cruise, Madonna, Paula Abdul, George Michael (may he rest in peace), Milli Vanilli – I was gutted when I found out they were a con job – and one of David Hasselhoff (don’t judge me) in nothing but his Baywatch swim-trunks, inside my cupboard, which my brother told my mom about (okay, now you can judge me).
During this time, I also started a scrapbook dedicated exclusively to Aamir Khan with cut-outs of every conceivable picture I could find in Stardust, Filmfare or Cineblitz, copies of which arrived like clockwork to our house from India. Man, I wish I had that now so I could prove to him I’m so not a stalker. Actually, um, scratch that.
For me ICSA was filled with memories of school plays, Arsenic and Old Lace and The Mousetrap – my favourite performance – where again I played the malicious Mrs Boyle. (Oh dear, I’m turning out to be quite ‘the vamp’ of my own life story! LOL.) Also, falling in love for the first, second and third time.
I even had my first ‘true-blue-listen-to-it-must-have-been-love’on repeat, kind of heart-break. I was fourteen years old and knew that Benoit – the French–Canadian boy I liked so much – was coming over to ask me out. These things were always preplanned and discussed with the larger friend circle at the time before being made official at my school. But as I opened the large wooden gate to my house, I literally
saw him change his mind. It was these damn gold-rim aviatoresque glasses with the gold bar on top that I was wearing. I was sure of it. So sure that I sat in tears in my room with him and my best friend – glasses on the floor – asking him why he had changed his mind, wanting him to admit the shallowness of it all. I remember my best friend In-Hye telling me that I can’t ask him that. ‘How can you ask him that?’ she said, annoyed at me. But all he could say was, ‘I’m sorry.’ And from that day on I would take those awful glasses off as soon as I got to school and squint through all my classes. (Sorry, mom.) I do think that he realized his four-eyed error eventually because the day I was leaving Ivory Coast to return to India, he bawled his eyes out at my house, all the way up to that wooden gate. He was dating my best friend at the time. #OhLife
What else? Prom, pool and pizza parties at mine, plus the one time we found a snake in the pool and why I decided to take up ice-skating instead. I got good at it too! While half my class smoked cigarettes, and drank beer, I, in true Indian-nerd-in-high-school-style, went ice-skating instead, often by myself. (Probably why my liver can take so many Jägerbombs now.)
I used to read a lot of Nancy Drew and chic-lit growing up, but then a boy-crush named Chris Conner introduced me to Stephen King. I was immediately enthralled by Mr King’s ability to inject slightly surreal, but entirely believable horror into everyday situations. I became so obsessed that I read every novel, short story and non-fiction book he ever wrote. My favourites were Night Shift, Misery (a classic), Cujo, The Tommy Knockers, The Eyes of the Dragon, Four Past Midnight and Different Seasons. I’ll be honest, I kind of lost interest while reading the Dark Tower series, tried a similar horror-fiction author Dean Koontz for a while and then gave up on the genre entirely.
But I think Stephen King opened my mind about writing reality through all his books. What always struck me about them was, that they sounded more like a narration than a novel. As if someone was sitting by the fireside with me and recounting an almost true story. They felt personal, intimate almost. Like I was the only one in the room, like the story was just for me. I also loved that he filled his novels with ‘Easter eggs’, where die-hard fans would find little crossover moments between his books. As if everything he wrote was happening in the same universe, at the same time. Oddly enough, till this day I can’t watch a scary movie. I feel traumatized by it. But his books I would devour voraciously, even though they qualified as horror. Perhaps there was comfort in the thought that my mind would make the clown in It look as ominous (or not) as I wanted it to be and not some CGI-generated Hollywood blockbuster version that would keep me up at night. (FYI, thanks to The Ring, I didn’t sleep for weeks.)