Café Complete Wellbeing

I resumed office after the long weekend and was totally stumped to learn that printing of the October 2009 issue was done. Not only that, the early copy was on Manoj’s desk. We had just closed the issue on Friday and it was done. Just like that. Wow!

This is one of the many joys of working with Complete Wellbeing. We are serious about deadlines and we print well ahead of time. Having worked with many magazines before, let me tell you that’s nowt the way things actually work. Well, they are supposed to work that way, but they don’t. There are many reasons for that— articles arrive late, take forever to get edited, and invariably schedules go for a toss. There’s too much confusion and in the madness deadlines get trampled upon—no one even notices them..

The sad part is all the hard work that the team does, reaches people late..sometimes even at the tail-end of a month.

But not at Complete Wellbeing. Here, the issue hits the stands on the 27th of each month. Without fail. Feels good to uphold and live by these good journalism practices. And feels even better in the knowledge that our readers get it on time. We do it all for them, after all.

Well coming back to the October ‘09 issue. It was a pure joy to hold. Staring back at me from the cover was….a very intellegent and self-assured, Viswanathan Anand. I can tell you this much, you’ve never this man featured on the cover of a Wellbeing magazine before. In fact, you’ve never seen such a cover before! Can’t wait to get my copy and show off to friends and family. I think you should too.

When PG [P Ghawali, our art director] made the Sachin cover, we thought that was the best cover we had ever made. PG was so proud and happy that he was grinning from ear to ear all day. [PG has a black and white beard and when he grins his whole face lights up. It is a happy sight.] He took a printout and pinned it up on the big notice board. How regal Sachin looked. Simply majestic. No one ever passed the noticed board without looking at the cover at least once. Sometimes people used to forget where they are going and would just stand there looking at the cover [now I’m stretching and you know it].

Soon it was time to move on to the next issue. Since we had created such a noise the last time with the Sachin cover and the survey, we badly wanted to maintain the momentum. We didn’t want to be a one-issue wonder. We had tasted appreciation and recognition, once. Now we were spoilt. We wanted it again.

We had too many options. That’s because a lot of role models we had contacted the last time, were still to reply back. Once again, this was totally out of the blue. The writer [a very good friend of mine] who I had assigned two celebrities — the aces of the lot [Cake walk. I told you we were big, didn’t I?] hadn’t reverted on the status. So I called and when I heard what she told me, I almost died. “What interviews?” she had said. Finally I recovered and sent her the questions again.

Two days later: I was once again meeting someone [that’s really not what I only do], when I get a call from this friend. “Mila?” she asked. “Kya mila?”. “Shahrukh Khan interview!” “Oh, you sent, meaning you got him!”. And I ran for my desk. The rest as they say, is history.

One of the winners of the role models and our initial choice for the cover of the Sachin issue was Amitabh Bachchan. Once again we were sitting in Manoj’s office taking stock of our progress and planning [we do that a lot], when Amol walked with an envelope and hands it to Manoj. The look on Manoj’s face was a Kodak moment. What he had in his hand was a letter addressed personally to Manoj signed by the Big B himself saying that “I feel privileged and honoured”. We all jumped and surrounded Manoj to have a glimpse of it. Everyone wanted to touch the letter like it was something holy coming directly from God. I even took a photo of the letter with my phone. I took a separate close-up of his signature—Amitabh Bachchan. His signature is as impressive as the man himself. It has character. And I have it on my phone. J

On another occasion, we were yet again having a discussion in Manoj’s cabin [don’t get me wrong, we sit for creative ideation] when Amol barged into the room saying “Ashwini, [our assistant editor] call for you from Mr Bachchan’s office.” What next? “Call from Mr Obama’s office?” Why not?

When the intentions are right, things start falling into place. We all knew we were doing something great and something good when we were bringing out the Role Models issue [December 2008]. We wanted to take our magazine to the next level. We were putting everything in place, so we had planned for a great cover story, pictures and layouts. We had no idea what the cover was going to be. We had contacted all the top role models of the survey for an interview. We had sent out questions to all of them. There was a time, when we had the skeleton in place, but no flesh to fill it. There was some uncertainty.

It was my first or second day on my new job at Complete Wellbeing. The entire team was huddled around the table in Manoj’s cabin. When suddenly Shivani [our editorial consultant] announced that we had Sachin Tendulkar’s interview. At first, all were still. Silence. And suddenly there were shouts of joy. The clouds of doubts had parted. A sliver of light had shined through.

Not only that in his very first answer Sachin said, “What? My countrymen think that I am the happiest. What an honour? I will cherish this compliment forever.” Can you believe it, Sachin Tendulkar saying that to Complete Wellbeing! Sachin is known to be very selective in giving his interviews.

Things started falling in place faster after that. It was like the whole universe was readjusting itself to help us achieve our dream of doing something great. We then got in touch with RBS for the cover photograph and RBS agreed! The RBS contact person later told me that they had asked Sachin’s consent before giving us a nod. Meaning it was no accident. Sachin had known all along. We had arrived!

When I came to meet Manoj for my final job interview at Complete Wellbeing, I had to wait for three hours to meet Manoj [Editor-Publisher-Business Head]. When Manoj finally met with me, he was both tensed and excited. He and Rahul [Associate Editor] kept exchanging glances, something was obviously going on. “Is there a problem, Manoj?” I asked. “No. No problem. We have planned something so huge, the world will talk about us.” Manoj said. His words were prophetic. He was talking about the survey. And when the Complete Wellbeing Health and Happiness Survey was finally published in the December 2008 issue, the world took notice. We got fantastic media coverage. Neo Sports, CNN IBN, Star News, Star Maza, a double spread feature in Mid-Day, front page news on economictimes.com…everyone was talking about Complete Wellbeing and its survey.
Every day, Manoj would walk in the morning and declare, “One more channel covered us,” and all our faces would light up. “Ye!” we’d shout. The mood was electric. When I decided to join Complete Wellbeing, I had an idea that I was joining something unique and that I was at the right place. After the survey, I was sure.