Where American Pop Culture Flirts with Desi Culture
By Priya Bhayana

MTV Desi launched with the kind of explosive charm that is so MTV, so New York, and so deliciously desi. An enormous screen in Times Square, New York, launched MTV's salute to South Asians with flashing images of music videos from top South Asians artists. Nusrat Durrani [left], the darkly charming and wickedly naughty General Manager of MTV, the man responsible for the creation of MTV Desi relishes the memory of that night.

EGO Columnist Priya Bhayana spoke with Durrani, who seems to be perennially dressed in black, has a crop of unruly curly black hair, and eyes that seem to be slightly bored with ennui, till he flashes an amused smile if you say something utterly heretical, about what MTV Desi means for desis.

	MTV Desi Website

Why was MTV Desi created?
If you’re South Asian American, you have a specific mindset: you’re bicultural. You are American- you grew up here, you went to school here, you have an American sensibility. But you also have a very strong emotional connection to your country of origin. Split between many cultures makes you inherently different than someone who doesn’t share that.

If you’re South Asian in the US, failure is not an option. There are stories about those who are doctors and engineers, but also those whose true inner passions are to be actresses, painters, poets. How do they pursue these passions if there isn’t a role model out there? If you are someone like that in the US, you haven’t had a TV platform that truly reflects your identity.

MTV Desi’s progamming mission is to super-serve that type of person. Pop culture is how we do it. If you’re South Asian American you haven’t seen meaningful representation up to this point. Things like multi-racial dating, balancing the culture of your parents with the culture you grew up with in America; these stories aren’t told. There is such a rich experience that hasn’t been properly articulated.

Explain the importance of the way in which MTV Desi was launched in addressing this need.
The channel was streamed live for 2 ½ hours on the large screen in Times Square. The way we did it was very interesting. It was almost a metaphor for the way that South Asian pop culture has been experienced in the US in the past- just glimpses of it. Some of it is chaotic, some is smooth and sexy, some is lost in translation. The countdown video to the launch was a metaphor for that experience. It ended in a lucid piece which was the launch of MTV Desi. Suddenly at 9pm, the world saw a music video by Rabbi- a Sikh popstar from India who doesn’t quite look like what you’d expect a popstar to look like. There he was, displayed in Times Square- in the center of the world. With MTV Desi, there’s a platform for him now.

What would you see as MTV Desi’s ultimate goal in creating this channel?
A goal for us, for MTV Desi, is to be a window for the rest of America to view these cultures through. America has had these flirtations with South Asian culture. Ashwariya Rai, fashion trends that are current, etc... but it’s a fairly superficial understanding of South Asian culture. It’s more than that fleeting sort of fashion trend that happens. It’s much more. These are very rich, very buried and vibrant cultures. Not that we’re trying to be all-purpose, we’re a pop culture channel.

How did you choose your VJ’s?
We’re looking for a variety of people. We feel that the South Asian American diaspora is so varied and diverse that not one or two personalities can't reflect it. We can’t represent every person in the diaspora, but we want to cover as many aspects as possible. A requirement is that the person must be compelling on air and must be able to connect and engage with the audience. Each person should be able to authentically represent at least one aspect of the diaspora.

With a growing interest in all things South Asian, do you think that the more general population will be interested in MTV Desi?
A trend is a trend is a trend. What I know is that there are 13 ½ million Asians, and they are not going anywhere. As long as they are here, our audience is here. As far as non-desi audience is concerned, look at Hispanic culture, which is very much a piece of today’s culture; it’s not going away, it has informed us, it is now apart of the fabric of our culture. I’m not an expert at this, but my hunch is that South Asian American culture can only proliferate. It can only get more and more entrenched in what constitutes the fabric of our country.

Images courtesy MTV Desi website