BRIEF PROFILE:
Neelesh Misra is an award-winning journalist, lyricist, Bollywood scriptwriter, author, photographer, and, most importantly, a storyteller. As a storyteller, his show “Yaadon Ka Idiot Box with Neelesh Misra,” on radio, has been a huge success.
Q) Share your experience of working with Saavn Originals?
Since last 5 yrs I have worked on radio platform that itself was an effort to take storytelling to a new level in India. Storytelling is a craft that has lived through the centuries in our blood and had lost out. So by taking it to the radio platform you are able to reach out to millions of people across the country. The association of Saavn is an effort to take that to an even next platform to create a storytelling platform for the new India and for Indians around the world. Here we are able to reach to the Indians at every corner of the world. I am delighted that this association will give us a new geographical reach and enable us to access remote parts of India where due to the fast advance of internet broadband services and mobile apps. We will be able to access Indians around the world across 160 countries who might have sparingly heard us in the past, but will be able to have appointment listening with us every day and that’s the relationship I am really looking forward to.
Q) From journalism to storytelling, it’s not wrong if we call you multi-tasker. What inspired you to the field of storytelling?
So I was a journalist for the large part of my carrier. I was a Deputy Executive Editor of the Hindustan Times. I travelled extensively as a reporter across the country, met thousands of people and their conversations have shaped my thinking and writing. I took a sabbatical from my newspaper at one point to set up a storytelling that needed band which was a turning point in my carrier.
While I did it on wimp and as a creative adventure at that time, I didn’t know that it could shape the next immediate phase of my life. One thing that to the other, the band got an album deal and soon the album were looking for a radio partner. That resulted in radio show and there was a journalist who had become a storyteller. There is one common said in pretty much everything I have done in anywhere over my carrier whether it is writing books, Hindi films songs, scripts or my narrative forms of journalism, I always try to be a good storyteller across the different platforms before actually taking it up as a full time vocation. So this journey is an attempt to bring onto the fiction platform of a different India, that I have written about as a journalist. And these stories are set in the real world based on the real peoples’ experiences, emotions and I think that’s why people like them because they see their lives reflected in our films.
Q) Share your experience working in the Radio.
I had never worked in radio before I started the ‘storytelling journey’. In fact, I had never written a short story before this. The only memories of being on radio were probably singing a song on Akashwani chains in Lucknow, wherein they give an opportunity as a child artist once in a while or I used to recite a poem or something. To be very honest I didn’t understand the power of radio until I started this storyteling journey.
As I said, it started co-incidentally, as I was looking for a radio partner for my album band. We were piling one story – Diwali ki Raat and it moved a lot of people inside the radio station, for which it was prepared. It was the first time, I felt that there’s something right about this creative adventure and there is something big on mass reach. The sound engineer wept as he heard the story. That was the first time I saw that something I had written possess such a powerful impact. It was a very humbling and gratifying moment for me. When the radio show started, a lot of young people started writing me to say that they had gotten the dinner timing of their hostels changed in many different cities so that they could hear the stories conveniently. A lot of people wrote in that they started leaving their office late so that their timing could catch our 9 p.m. show. And we felt that it touched the raw nerve of this country which we have forgotten.
There’s a storyteller in all of us and there is a person who loves to hear stories from all of us. So the journey on radio became a personal connect with millions of people every day. I suddenly realized that how people started calling me Neelesh bhaiya or Dada, as I am a storyteller and not RJ. Often I meet people and they will laugh, cry and hug me at the performances. It was scary for me because of the amount of impact one’s work had on their lives, which means that one had to work much more responsibly. It was really the most amazing feeling and I think very few creative people must have enjoyed this level of joy or connect with the listeners. So the radio journey has been very fascinating and hopes that this journey goes out to the smallest caller of the country. I will love to reach out to the villages of UP which we are doing in ‘UP Ki Kahaniya’. If we add up our audience across radio, internet and digital platform we are reaching more than 100 million people every single day, through All India Radio (AIR), Big FM, Red FM, Saavn , Radio City, Radio Mantra, YouTube. This is a fascinating and life changing journey for me on radio and I just hope to continue it by maintaining the quality of content and keeping my sincerity and honesty.
Q) When talking about your job as a lyricist, how thoughtful you have been while writing a lyrics?
As a lyricist, I had the opportunity to work for more than 30 odd films since 2002. I will be lying if I say that these songs are not based on personal emotions. I am a fairly decent observer and listener and when it comes to emotions, I had my share of ups and downs along with emotional journeys. My idea is while remains restricted to the discipline of songs, if one can write with some amount of honesty and visual writing which bring emotions alive, and this will be a good song for me.
The challenges in today’s film industry is a Bollywood lyrics writer is literary writing a song with his or her hands tied at the back. A bollywood lyrics writer is actually not writing a song, rather he/ she is writing a ring-tone and the question is can you write a ring-tone? Well it will be the first 30 or 45 seconds of that song which the entire world will hear and this will decide the destiny of the song. All these have made the song tantalize or more sensational and that has come at the cost of poetry. This is definitely a challenge but someone like me who is actually not a professional writer and lot of amazingly talented colleagues will face this challenge as how to remain a poet while writing bollywood songs. Colleagues like Amitabh Bhattacharya, Prasoon, Swanand, all have struggled with these and conveyed their thoughts as a poet while living the rigour of the bollywood medium at the same time. So I think a lot of my personal experiences, journeys as a journalist- as I have met people and heard their emotions are all summed up in my songs which are the emotions of real people and my feelings.
Q) Albeit, you wear many hats and that too very well. What do you enjoy the most?
Three things I enjoy the most. One is when I am in front of a mic, narrating a story and it’s a well written story which allows me the opportunities to perform because I am an actor on radio and as any other actor, I would love more if I am given a good part to play. The second is, when I am on stage doing my live performances. The third and most special moment that I look forward to; standing behind the designer and getting the front page of Gaon Connection end and I truly enjoy it.
Q) What new book you are working upon? If you could name it or share the idea behind it.
There are two books that I am keen to work on, one is, I want to write a novel and I am trying to get the time to do it. The second one is, I want to write the Gaon Connection story of how we created a newspaper and a brand without any money and resources with everybody cynical about it. And how a very small team of people with nothing at their hands but able to create something that is getting attractions across the country. That’s the story which has amazing personal stories of my colleagues, their own sacrifices and readers etc. which I will love to put together in a book. Of-course, I will go back to writing my own novel which will be a decent one.
Q) Tell us something about your rural newspaper, Gaon Connection. What is the overall audience response you are getting from it?
Gaon Connection is in the center of my work now. I started it in December 2012 and it is a very small team of extremely committed people who had defied their own self doubts, who had to convince their families and taken a dramatic turn in their carrier to risk everything in order to pursue this uncertain journey.
In the last 3.5 years, Gaon Connection which is India’s first professionally run rural newspaper has managed to survive without any investor, political connection, corporate investment or robust advertising support. And this is a major achievement and still we survived. We won many Awards also including the Ramanath Goenka Awards for excellence in journalism twice which itself testifies our editorial content is excellent. The first time we won in its first year when I and my colleagues Mr. Manish Mishra, associate editor, won in the category ‘Uncovering India Invisible’ and second time my colleague Anu Singh Choudhary won in the last year in the ‘Sports Journalism Category’ and both time we won beating our English rivals.
There is a very prestigious award called the Ladli Award, which we have won 4 times now. Our Journalist Bhaskar Tripathi was selected amongst 12 journalists across the world by Thompson Foundation. There is a series of testimonials which has given us great courage and confidence. Now we have recently become daily about two months back and it’s our new battle to fight everyday but a happy and exciting battle to fight. We still don’t have an Investor but that’s our destiny. Might be we are trying to create a newspaper that doesn’t need the support of advertisers or investors to run. We are trying hard to create a model which is subscription based. We are keen to diversify by new edition in new state by introducing with an edition in Jharkhand. We could be starting it soon.
Q) In near future, are there any plans to amaze us with a new role being played by you? Well we are waiting to tag Neelesh, as an actor or a producer.
I would love to learn directing a film and I am taking some baby steps by directing a short film in the coming month. I would also love to learn how to act, as I am acting on radio every day. I will love to take on new challenges if I can do this well. But I don’t want to give up my current things, what I am doing like Gaon connection, storytelling and I am privileged that I never did anything boring for my living and truly blessed.
Q) How do you want to spread a message to all the parents out there about letting their children to choose a desired career?
In the first season of my radio show, I received a lot of messages from students in Kota to write-up a story on ‘inspiration and uplifting’. I ended up writing a story and dedicated it to them. It’s called ‘Papa Se Shart’. It was in fact an incident that I had with my father.
My father wanted me to be a doctor like all fathers used to have in that generation, but I never wanted to do that. In class 11 at parents’-teacher meeting, I said to my class teacher that I am not interested in studying biology and he is forcing me. Then my teacher and father exchanged looks and he walked out. After that my father said – ‘Ek shart rakhte hain and according to it, if you get first division (UP board) then you will do whatever you want or else you will do what I want.’ And I said Okay. But that was very clever as I had to study very hard to secure the position. And later I moved onto Arts. Then I told my father that ‘I am so glad you said those words to me.’ My father said that no parent should force their children to pursue the parent’s dream.
This becomes my message that today’s children are far more wise and mature than the generation before them were. Thirteen is the new twenty three. I think we credit them with far less maturity, intelligence and wisdom. But of-course parents should guide them. But I think this traditional Indian idea of parents living their dreams through their children must stop.
Nice ,Nilesh sir