MTV Beats is gone, but remember the baby with a TV for a head?

The TV launch script had followed the static launch idea; the back story of how that baby born with a TV head came about was the film's idea.

With no dialogue in the film, and access to songs from MTV's endless library, for some reason—I forget now why—we didn’t get the rights to “Choli ke Peeche” for the scene with the helmet breaking. Completely dejected, because we didn’t think we could find a better fit there, we tried many songs, but nothing felt right. 

In the middle of the night, in the sound studio, when “Oye Oye” synced there, we laughed like crazy, wondering: if it seems there are twins in there, were we too tired, or was it really that funny?

Kani Kusruti was the perfect choice; there was something about her audition that was weirdly odd. When I saw her in that scene with the rice cooker in All We Imagine As Light recently, I smiled at the irony.

I remember the intense discussion on the bathrobe scene—in the middle of the shot, is she attracted to the TV, like the Japanese travel to Paris in love with the Eiffel Tower, or is she attracted to what’s playing on the TV, like you could be to someone’s mind and not how he or she looked? And we agreed it had to be the latter.

MTV Beats, along with VH1 India, ceased broadcasting on 15 March 2025, due to the JioStar merger and a shift in media consumption.

(The author is the founder and director of BusyPeople, an independent creative collective, and the former chief creative officer of Mullen Lintas. This piece was originally posted on LinkedIn and has been republished with her permission.)