Mid-day Editor in Chief Tinaz Nooshian featured in the Stir Creativity campaign with top Mumbai creators. She discusses why Mumbai is an inspiration and what it takes to be innovative every day
Mid-day Editor in Chief Tinaz Nooshian. Pic: Ashish Rane
What's your favourite thing about Mumbai?
I like that it’s a working class city with a democratic stance, giving everyone an almost equal opportunity. Mumbai’s position as a textile hub at the turn of the twentieth century - home to flourishing cotton mills - made it a city run as much by moneyed traders as daily wagers. It’s this that continues to lend it a purposeful vibe, leaving its residents - original and adopted, privileged and pedestrian - little time for bootless errands. “Time khoti karne ka nai” – that’s Mumbai for you.
ADVERTISEMENT
Define yourself as a creator.
I am a journalist, a teller of stories. As editor of Mumbai’s oldest tabloid, I put together a news concoction every day that’s part-public service, part-entertainment.
What inspires you to think out of the box with everything you create?
It’s tough to determine what exactly makes a mind creative. But, at the most elementary level, I am inspired to think outside of the usual because I am offered the freedom to. Mid-day, the home-grown Mumbai newspaper I represent, is big on ideas and always determined to survive external climate and competition. The pandemic and resultant lockdown, made our role doubly critical as disseminators of factually accurate news that Mumbaikars could use, but it disrupted the newspaper distribution channel horribly. Yet, without a single day’s break, Mid-day converted the print product into a digital PDF to be disseminated via WhatsApp to anyone who wanted the latest news, subscriber or not. It was creative thinking at its best.
Watch video
View this post on Instagram
How should someone unlock their creative potential?
Be more than your job. Live more than your role. Learn what you thought you didn’t need. Watch, read and hear what you believed wouldn’t hold your attention. Taste what you thought you wouldn’t like. Spend some time (not too much) with those you don’t dig. Everything that we do, magically finds its way to this giant sponge of experiences that we carry with us, and dip into unconsciously when we need a creative tool. Feed this reservoir.
The Stir Creativity campaign is to help creative minds showcase their work. How important is it to support and nurture young creatives?
This would be an ugly, insufferable world without writers, artists and thinkers. To provide fledging creators support means to help the world come closer to self-awareness, and to allow us all to make better sense of who we are.
Mid-day has an over four-decade-long legacy of bringing its readers exclusive news and entertainment coverage
What do you see yourself doing in the next five years?
The achievable dream is to continue to tell stories, even if on a different canvas. The aspirational dream is to work with my hands. Modern life can be alienating and characterised by lack of contact. Those who work with the head, like me, are told we have the influence to change the world. But what about the tactile, small satisfactions? I miss that.
Tell us about your participation in the Bombay Sapphire Stir Creativity campaign.
It’s been delightful to be part of a unique idea that celebrates inspiration and Mumbai creators. We filmed my leg of the campaign at the unassuming but charming Café Dela Paix, an Irani café that’s as quintessentially Mumbai as Mid-day. For the last 10 months, Mid-day’s editorial team has put together the newspaper from outside the office (logistical nightmare but once-in-a-lifetime learning), each one choosing a refuge spot to do their job. A Mumbai newspaper turns out so much better the next morning when it’s conceived over bun-maska-chai.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
