As journalistic requests go, this was possibly the strangest. Fittingly enough it was from Bappi—which is how Alokesh Lahiri is best known—who called one night. Earlier that day, I’d shot an interview with him for my TV show. Bappi, 54 then, had come down to the Mehboob studio set, along with son Bappa. The interview had gone off quite well, with sensational revelations on his swag and sartorial sense. Much of it was inspired by hip-hop artistes in the West, he told me. 

But the phone call was about something else. “Bappa is very upset,” Bappi said. “Throughout the interview, you called me Bappi, not Bappi Da. Please change it.” Not knowing how editing that was possible, gently explaining that I called all guests by their first name, given the show’s casual tenor, I was mildly irritated that it was Bappi making this odd demand.