Who is the real Malini Agarwal? Tell us 5 things about you

Malini: Oh my god! If you find out, please let me know. But okay I guess 5 things – I am an enthucutlet, as I like to tell everyone, I have a lot of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) which is what I am powered by, that and Redbull. I am a great optimist, I am actually an optimist to the degree that when I know for sure something is going wrong, I will make up a story that it isn’t and convince myself that that story’s is actually real. You know if you just believe it and you want something badly enough the universe conspires to make it happen. I am actually a really shy public speaker, most people don’t know this about me. Nowshad and Mike can tell you how I am a complete mess like an hour before I have to go on stage in front of the camera. Everyone laughs at me later that how can you be so camera shy, you are so used to the camera now, but public speaking on stage is like still a nightmare for me. I like to play pool, I like to go dancing with my friends, I am a very social person. And I like to match-make people, I pride myself on that. At least I’ve tried to match-make literally everyone single that I know, that’s another thing everyone jokes with me about. I think that’s 5.

When I read MissMalini.com, to me even the news that you break, Bollywood news, it’s never mean gossip. Does that come from the way you are? Is that a conscious call?

Malini: Absolutely. Couple of things happened that made me realize this. Initially I did write gossip pieces back in the day and then I realized that when I had written the pieces and I would run into that celebrity at an event, I would try not to catch their eye or I’d be worried they’d come and say something to me. So then I thought, well if I am so concerned about something I have written, maybe I have done something wrong. Because

if I don’t have the balls to say it to their face then maybe I shouldn’t say it at all.

Another thing that happened was that I had found these pictures of Rajnikant without his hair and makeup and I blogged them and I got flamed for it. People were so upset with me; they said how could you do that? Why would you make him look so bad? The thing about Bollywood and its fans is that we love our stars, we want to put them on a pedestal and for a large part they are our heroes, so why rip them apart? I realized there is a whole other side to celebrities and no one is showing you that fun side. No one is playing charades with Shah Rukh Khan and we’ve done that and it’s so fun to see how he would act out a movie or do things like going to Farhan’s house and asking him to sing a song that he wrote. Things that make them more real and relatable that has kind of been the conscious effort because that’s really what connects all of us at some level.

It used to be you could make friends with people like in Mean Girls where you can all say something mean together about someone else and that bonds people, but actually you can change that and maybe say something nice to someone else. There’s two things I realized, one

I used to sit at Fashion Week and everyone would be saying something terrible about the show and I wanted to say something nice but I would hesitate, oh what if I sound stupid and I was like why do I sound stupid saying something nice

and they sound okay saying something mean and I started to apply that. I would unabashedly say I loved it, you don’t have to love it, but I loved it and what gives you the authority to hate it and not gives me the authority to love it?

Watch what Team MissMalini has to say to budding entrepreneurs

It’s so much of a group effort, how do the three of you work so well together? Do you ever get into each other’s hair?

Mike: Everyone has cranky days, obviously. Whenever there’s any kind of stress on the company I think we all take that personally and that comes out sometimes. So yea ofcourse there’s fights, ofcourse there’s bad days.

I think it’s the shared passion of what we are trying to do and what we know we are going to achieve that trumps everything. What trumps that is that we are all friends first.

You always get those warnings about don’t go into business with your friends, and you know in some ways it is good advise. But you know it’s tough and we make it work.

Malini: I am definitely the moody one, he (Nowshad) is the voice of reason. So Mike and I would get really riled up about something, which is rightfully so and be like, ‘we should call this out and they shouldn’t have done that’ and Nowshad is like calm down guys, sleep on it. So yea.

Nowshad: We have the additional kind of advantage and disadvantage of being married, right , so the advantage is that…

Malini: He cant quit

Nowshad: haha so the disadvantage is that you are always tempted to talk about work or analyse what happened during the day and you know that absence makes the heart grow fonder, I wouldn’t know. But I think more than anything else, because we are in this together, every action I take I know is going to impact her and ofcourse Mike.

Mike: And my wife too I have to say, feels like she is a part of the business as well.

Nowshad: And yea when you are all so closely knit in that sense you take your actions more seriously than if you just had investors’ money or you know that perspective. None of us can walk away from this lets put it that way.

Malini: But I have to say that I cant imagine having a better dream team to do this with. It would never have gotten beyond like a dreamy blog, who likes to write about celebrities and cover happy shiny things, if it wasn’t for these guys.