First, let’s get one thing out of the way. MTV is going nowhere. Last year, Paramount Global announced that in some countries, the channel will stop broadcasting by December 25. Millennials around the world dropped their TV remote in panic. Turns out, the company was referring only to sub-channels such as MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live. Regular MTV continues, in India too, though we’re not sure who’s really watching.

The channel has been playing here for 30 years. At its peak, MTV was that glorious spot that filled the years between Chitrahaar on Doordarshan and YouTube on the internet. How else were Indians to know that Michael Jackson was the monster all along in his Thriller video? Or that Milind Soman was going to pop out of the wooden box in Alisha Chinai’s Made In India? Or that it was two grandpas who were actually singing Macarena?

Right off, MTV was always more than music. For a generation coming into its own in the 1990s, it was a rebellious older sibling who spoke their language, played their anthems, understood their angst. Sure, MTV played rock, pop and hip-hop. But it also taught a generation how to speak, dress, joke, rebel and belong.

Mumbai writer Shubarna Mukherjee Shu, 43, remembers sitting in front of the living room TV in 1999, landline in hand, when MTV’s Most Wanted played the top songs of the moment. “My friends and I would be on a conference call, collectively praying,” for any song from the Backstreet Boys’ album Millennium to air. “When they finally played one, we’d scream-sing along on the phone. It made our day.”

This kind of magic didn’t happen by chance. Here’s how it all was all part of a grand design.

MTV India announced itself with swagger. In January 1996, Slash from Guns N’ Roses flew to Bangalore to jam with Indus Creed at the channel’s launch. Months later, MTV partnered with Michael Jackson for the Mumbai stop on his HIStory World Tour. There was an 11-city roadshow, MTV Get It, making stops on college campuses and getting a sense of what young India was all about.

“The Indian music industry was not developed,” says Seher Bedi, who joined MTV in 1995 as a producer, one of the first employees at the channel. “We had singers and bands, but no music videos. Outside India, nobody knew these artists existed.”

The team started from scratch, shooting videos, packaging live gigs, creating sets. “In that first year, the buzz was insane,” Bedi recalls. “Audiences went crazy when we just showed up to record concerts.”

The graduating class of Indian pop — Alisha Chinai, Daler Mehndi, Lucky Ali, Shaan and Sagarika, KK, Sonu Nigam, Euphoria, Colonial Cousins, Indian Ocean and more — all built their fame on airplay on MTV, and rival Channel [V].

“A R Rahman wasn’t known outside the south then,” recalls Cyrus Broacha, who hosted shows on the channel until 2008. “We were shooting Maa Tujhe Salaam in the desert, and I told him, ‘Bring that bag from the corner.’ I had no idea he’d become this colossal figure. Back then, he was just a colleague.”

International music was funnelled into simplified segments: Unplugged for acoustic recordings; Alternative Nation for indie and alt genres; Headbangers Ball for noisy metal and rock; Select for viewers requests. And, in a move that left Millennials ever grateful, MTV flashed the song’s name, artist, album and often the video director, with every play. What a time to be alive!

“The channel’s high-energy aesthetic left its mark on advertising, film, comedy, graphic design — everything. Show business as we know it today wouldn’t exist without it,” says Alex Kuruvilla, who led MTV India between 1999 and 2006. They called viewers the MTV Generation – kids who chomped on burgers, dared to wear jeans with kurtas, got bored in three minutes (the average length of a song), mourned Kurt Cobain, rapped to Baba Sehgal and knew the difference between RHCP and RATM.

India needed a little hand-holding to process these new sounds. Enter VJs (video jockeys), young super-confident Indians who dressed stylishly, had radical opinions and jabbered between the songs. It was immediately the coolest job in the country.

“Rahul Khanna was based in Singapore then, so Tara Deshpande and I were technically the first local VJs,” Broacha says. In 1997, Malaika Arora joined to host Club MTV and Loveline. The same year, MTV launched its nationwide VJ Hunt, and discovered Maria Goretti and Nikhil Chinapa.

“I almost didn’t go,” recalls Goretti, who was a model then, and got asked to audition in the last week of the hunt. “I thought maybe they just needed more people on stage. My sister pushed me. I won. It changed my life.”

Chinapa, an architecture student, had been hosting radio shows and live events for pocket money in Bangalore. He participated on a whim. “Anything that popped up, I’d try,” he says. He moved to Mumbai, started off with hosting Select, eventually leaving to set up the Submerge and Sunburn music festivals and shape the channel VH1 Supersonic.

The job looked like fun, but it was relentless: VJs shot links, hosted on-ground events, visited colleges, met brand partners and distributors, attended parties. The pay was modest; the real currency was access — to artists, to ideas, to a rapidly globalising world.

“I don’t think any of us realized how much impact we were having,” says Shenaz Treasury, who hosted MTV Most Wanted and MTV Chillout and moved on to MTV Asia. “It hit me later, when people in Singapore would recognize me on the street and tell me how MTV shaped their style, humour, even their slang, that MTV was bigger than any one show.”

In 1998-99, the channel went mainstream, including Hindi music in its programming. “While the brand’s DNA was global, everything else – the IPs, programming, the shows, the marketing was hyper local,” says Kuruvilla. “MTV took pride in its local successes.”

It’s most enduring hit: Bakra, in which Broacha essentially pranked unsuspecting folks on camera. No one was exempt – not even movie stars and cricketers. The MTV generation was fearlessly laughing at itself, at others, at life. It spawned 13 competitors within six months and ran for over a decade.

Broacha recalls feedback from an unexpected fan: “Someone called my landline and said, ‘Bal Thackeray speaking,’ He spoke clearly, in English, and said, ‘I just wanted to tell you I love this show. I stop all our meetings at 3.30 to watch it. Keep up the good work’.”

The channel took Indian music to the world. In 1999, Bedi was sent to New York to cover the MTV Video Music Awards, where A R Rahman won the International Viewer’s Choice: MTV India for Dil Se Re, the title track from Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se. “We shot with him across the NYC talking about his favourite places and music,” she recalls. “Later, we took Colonial Cousins to MTV London for the first Unplugged.”

Mini Mathur, VJ between 1999 and 2003, recalls interviewing Richard Gere at an Aids concert, stepping in last-minute to interview Deep Purple, and hosting Aamir Khan alongside the cast of Lagaan. 

“The actors were nervous – it was their first big interaction with cameras. I moved easily between English and Hindi, and Aamir looked at me with respect.”

Goretti recalls being part of Gaana Masti, which parodied popular music. “Cyrus and I spoofed an Urmila Matondkar song. We also did Koi Mil Gaya: Mini was Rani Mukerji, Cyrus was Shah Rukh, and I was Kajol. Mad stuff!”

YouTube launched in 2005, Spotify launched worldwide in 2008 (and in India in 2019). Music videos, MTV’s lifeblood, were now free and on-demand. So, it pivoted to reality shows. It was a new MTV generation, one that dreamed of making it to Roadies and Splitsvilla, who understood the power of their own stories and voice.

“When people auditioned, they’d talk openly about trauma – facing abuse for being gay, skinny, fat, identity,” says Chinapa. “We encouraged young people to speak.”

We no longer need VJs, handholding or a chance to speak. We’re doing it all ourselves, editing, adding filters and clapping back at trolls. But MTV’s spirit – Indian yet international, irreverent but honest – it will take more than a channel shutdown to stamp that out.

People have been stepping up to do their bit to help others in the ongoing pandemic and Tara Deshpande is one of them. The actress and food writer has been preparing meal boxes for those who’ve been badly hit during the lockdown and cannot afford the basics. Says Tara, “We took on this initiative in March last year. It was worse because even basics were not available then. We had to stop the services when a Coronavirus case was discovered in our building. People are in a bad way, too, in the lockdown this month. A lot of daily-wage earners and street kids are without food. I get calls from people as far as Navi Mumbai, Dahisar and even, Pune. I also get emails for food from people around the country as well. It’s all so heart-breaking!”

Tara, who has films like Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin (1996) and Bombay Boys (1998) to her credit, began making meals for those around the area where she resides in South Mumbai. She has augmented that effort to 12 neighbourhoods now. She informs, “We make boxes of food and give it to pavement dwellers, especially children, who are in the pockets of South Mumbai. Some deliveries are made on a scooter, but most times, people have to come pick up the food. It is free and only for those who cannot afford to buy meals as they have no income. Also, it’s a one-pot meal, a combination of lentils or beans with vegetables cooked everyday and served with rice. For instance, bisi bele bhaat or chana with doodhi and rice.”

Tara feels there is an urgent need to make this effort bigger. “I am able to just do something in my pocket of the city, but looking at the posts on social media, we can make a whole network across India and create community food banks,” she elaborates, adding, “Remember, no one is inconsequential and we can only do this together. One call can build a connection and lead to saving a life.”