Opinion
Manu Joseph: Nari Hira was a success only Bombay could have given India
Summary
- The Bombay-based publisher of ‘Stardust’ magazine who we lost this week was a filmmaker too. Arguably, Nari Hira (1938–2024) was someone who could have existed or thrived in no other Indian city.
When I do the math now, I realize that many people whom I considered old when I was 21 were actually only in their 40s and 50s. Nari Hira, for instance, who I thought was the most flamboyant old man in India was in his mid-50s when I first met him in 1995.
I had just arrived from Madras and Bombay was a foreign land that was years ahead of the India I knew. It had people who could only be found in Bombay, like Nari Hira (1938—2024).
On many mornings, Hira would arrive outside a former seedy hotel that he had converted into the head office of his magazine business, Magna Publishing Company, which included the film gossip and features magazine Stardust.
It was one of the largest selling magazines in India. There were times, surely, when it outsold all other magazines. Hira usually arrived in an old luxury car, possibly a BMW. He was a slim man on whom expensive suits hung well. Given his complexion and manner, I was surprised to learn that his real name was Narendra Hiranandani.
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To me, he looked like ‘Nari Hira.’ When he arrived, he always walked fast across the foyer towards a lift, as fast as his poorly paid employees walked at the end of the day to catch a local train.
A distinct character of Bombay was people in a rush. All sorts of people walked very fast to achieve various ends, giving the city the reputation that its people were very busy—which was bogus.
Hira attributed his ability to antagonize film stars to the fact that he was “from South Bombay," where old money lived, people who did not rate anything that was Indian very highly, including the Hindi film industry, which was based in the suburbs. They were the sort of people who were global and ‘global’ was a local place somewhere in the West.
Their lives were probably an imitation of those led by the cultural elite of New York or London, but we could not tell because we were not exposed to the originals. But the most important thing about Bombay’s ‘global’ crowd was that their source of wealth and their vocations were two different things.
They appeared as though they made their money off their passions, but in reality, their assets sponsored their passions, which helped some of them make more money but most of them just lived off their inheritance.
Hira tracked media trends in New York and replicated them in India. His magazine business was one of them. He also produced films that were meant for video-cassettes, to be delivered to homes.
These were Hindi films that would bypass theatres—and in that way, bypass the need for expensive superstars. I got involved in one of them when he asked me to write a film. Nothing came out of it, but he made me write so many drafts that I think I learnt a lot about how to write a movie.
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Hira was a fine example of Bombay’s last gentry, a fellowship of cosmopolitans who were so influential in the media that they conveyed the idea of Bombay being ‘cosmopolitan,’ which was untrue because Bombay was filled with intolerant locals and the poor from various parts of the country who were usually only called ‘migrants.’
The Hindi film industry, too, was monopolized by an old elite, but most of them lived in the suburbs. They were English-speaking. Most film stars read screenplays in the English script (the Latin script), as very few could read the Hindi script (Devnagiri) well.
In comparison, the Tamil film industry had a rustic or small-town air, and so held too many things sacred. The modernity of the Hindi film industry and of Bombay gave the film gossip industry a certain freedom to exist.
For instance, Stardust could run a shocking story about Amitabh Bachchan and thrive because of that; no Tamil magazine could have pulled off a scoop on Rajinikanth and survived. In Hira’s Bombay, there were stars, but no feudal lords.
In its own way, despite all its journalistic flaws, Stardust stood for a glorious age of media when celebrities feared journalism and even had a cautious respect for it.
Film stars, even though some of them boycotted Stardust, needed to appear in the magazine. It would constantly provoke all sorts of people.
I remember once, when the internet was new, it ran a story claiming that some websites featured nude images of women actors, which were actually morphed photographs.
A women’s rights organization protested outside the US embassy, saying that the internet was an American company that was defaming Indian culture. They also tried to storm Magna’s office, and somehow managed to slap its CEO.
The magazine was consequential and some of the most powerful film stars did not know how to tame it—but eventually, they would triumph and Stardust would lose its prominence. The world was changing, and the media was turning servile to stars, which too was a business model. And there was nothing Hira could do about it.
In the war between the city and the village, between global cultural orphans and the local elite, Hira was among the last of the urban gentry before the villagers won. I could get that much, but I didn’t understand many things about this remarkable man.
Once, when he was leaving the country for about two months, he wanted me to live in his house at Breach Candy as a free resident, and caretaker. Thus, from a chawl in Prabhadevi, I was transplanted to a millionaire’s flat in a high-rise with its own garden.
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It was a bit like a moment from Harry Potter’s life. A portal opened and I saw something that seemed like magic to me. But the first morning, I realized he had cancelled newspaper delivery.
