Nari Hira

“I was running Creative Unit which was a very successful advertising agency of its time. Shobhaa (De) was working for me as a copywriter. So I told her that we would start this out-of-the-box film magazine that would revolutionize film journalism because film magazines like Filmfare, Picture Post and Star ‘N’ Style at that point were deadly boring. For instance, they would have on their covers Nanda, Waheeda Rehman, Asha Parekh making sandcastles at Juhu. So I wanted to start something that was totally different and so for the first issue I got the cover story from Anju Mahendru’s mother and the cover headline was: Is Rajesh Khanna secretly married to Anju Mahendru? And this was done with Rajesh Khanna knowing what we were doing because he loved the publicity that went with it. We ran the magazine from Creative Unit and then we took an office in the same neighborhood at Agra building. I sat on one floor in the mezzanine and Shobhaa sat on the upper floor with Uma Rao and Ingrid Albuquerque. Binoy Thomas was also there at that time. So it started like that. We were South Bombay kids and so stars didn’t mean anything to us. So we picked on any and everybody. We gave “our” names to the stars like we called Dharmendra “Garam Dharam”, Hema Malini “Idli Malini”, Shatrughan Sinha “Shotgun Sinha” and then later “Double Bore”. Shatrughan Sinha incidentally was the first star to visit us in the office because he was thrilled that we had put him on the cover. We always did the unusual – I remember while other publications put Dimple Kapadia on the cover, we put Anju Mahendru on the cover. … so, everybody expected the unexpected from us. So obviously we shot up in circulation and left all the other magazines far behind. The only competitor at that time was Star & Style. They had a very gossip column by Devyani Chaubal, but compared to our Neeta’s Natter, it was very tame.

A lot of stars thought Neeta of Neeta’s Natter was a real person. I remember I had thrown a party and Dharmendra asked me, “Where’s Neeta”? He thought Neeta was an actual person. Neeta’s Natter was just a generic term. The name “Stardust” came out of the thin air. I just thought of the name and I had that logo in mind. I worked out the logo with the artist and the arch, which got really famous after that. Everybody identified the arch with Stardust so even though it cut into the headline, it didn’t matter. I made Shobhaa De, the Editor of Stardust. She was Shobha Rajyadaksha at that time, and quite a famous model. In fact, Kabir Bedi had asked her, “Why do you want to give up such a high income to go and work as an editor?” She said she was okay with that, she just wanted to work with us. Shobhaa was with us for the next 12 years. After that, Uma Rao took over from Shobhaa and was the editor for quite some time.. Then there was Vanita Ghosh and then Prochi Badshah who did a very good job. After that Nishi Prem and Farida Balsara were joint editors followed by Ashwin Varde and Omar Qureshi. Much later Ashwin was made Editorial director and then Sarita Tanwar and Omar became the next editors. Ashwin moved on and went on to become a producer in the industry. After Sarita and Omar, there was Sonali Jaffar and then Faheem Ruhani and Ram Kamal Mukherjee. After that Srividya and Suguna Sundaram were joint editors. The current editor is now Sumita Chakraborty. Stardust always created an impact. I think one of our most controversial articles that shocked the industry was the Mamta Kulkarni cover. Then we wrote the story about Anupam Kher and he led a morcha which included stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Aditya Pancholi etc to the office. Of course, we sorted it out later. The third story would be when Amitabh (Bachchan) banned us. Our differences lasted for many years. But after he was in the hospital while filming Coolie, he met me at my house and we sorted out things and our “acquaintance” last till date. Another cover story on Aamir Khan also made headlines and that put us back on the map. Did I ever think Stardust would become as iconic as it has become over the years? …To tell you the truth? No. Because everybody told me it was stupid to start the magazine then because there was so much competition, right? But then Stardust arrived with a bang and it shot past the competition. This year we celebrate 50 Glorious Years Of Stardust and till date, we are head and shoulders above the rest.”