Comedian Cyrus Broacha takes on new author and old buddy Milind Soman in a comic roast, at the launch of the latter's memoir
Milind Soman and Cyrus Broacha
He has already said that there is nothing I can't talk about," says comedian, actor and author Cyrus Broacha, ahead of a book launch with a difference. The "he" in question is Milind Soman, and the book, his memoir titled Made In India.
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The memoir, co-authored by Roopa Pai, takes its name from singer Alisha Chinai's 1995 pop music video where Soman made an appearance. It tells the story of the boy next door and his journey, taking on various roles — a supermodel to an entrepreneur, an athlete to an activist.
Broacha admits that the idea came from Milee Ashwarya of Penguin Random House India and that he isn't bound by a format, or by the book for that matter. "I don't normally do book launches. They are boring, so much so that you don't want to enter the venue again," he says.
However, this isn't all. Broacha and Soman go back a long way and have been childhood swimming buddies, a friendship that dates back to the '70s. "We used to swim together at the YMCA. Of course, he was the national champion and I was the guy who came seventh of the eight people there. My mother would drive and we used to drop him home at Shivaji Park, on the way to Malabar Hill. She would keep telling him that he is so good looking, he'll be a model someday. I have got to give her some credit. He was just a boy from Shivaji Park who swam," Broacha says, adding in jest, "We are quite the same; he likes to run all day and I like to sleep all day."
Their friendly ties underwater were renewed on the sets of Khatron Ke Khiladi in Brazil in 2010, an episode Broacha is sure to bring up during the roast. "He was the first to get eliminated, so we will start with that roast. Ironically, we were swimmers and Milind lost in the round where we had to go into the water. I can't not bring this up in the roast," he says with a laugh.
The session will be interspersed with other such incidents from Soman's childhood and later years, drawing occasionally from the book Broacha claims to have not read. "I can't read the book in this 21st century. I'll just read a line or two here and there. It's called graphic reading," he says, much to our anguish. A discussion on the book, he assures us, will happen before the roast begins.
There might be a few uncomfortable topics that Broacha has up his sleeve, too. "I can't reveal them yet, but let's just say it has something to do with a court case," he says.
Overall, it will be a peek into a lesser-known side of Soman, the man, away from the cameras. "People think of him as a supermodel with his head up in the clouds. In reality, he is quite the rascal and always up to something naughty. He is also an introvert and disappears sometimes. He runs away like a ghost. [This] Reminds me, I am going to ask him this in the roast. I hope he turns up at the launch, it will have to be the roast of a ghost otherwise," he says.
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