98.3 Radio Mirchi organised Saal of the Year, as a part of its month long campaign, Saal pe Malaal. The fundamental idea of the campaign was to highlight the ‘malaal’ culture in Kashmiri festivities, especially weddings.

MK News:
Srinagar November 21:
Mirchi took a satirical route to highlight this bane that exists so deeply in our society. The Saal was a two day event, with the traditional Maenzraat (mehendi) and Yenivol (baraat) being the themes for the days. The mehendi took place in Gani Sons, with all the traditional rituals in place. From chakkan myewi (dry-fruit basket), to mehendi packets, to even gyawun. Valley’s favourite, Moin Khan performed at the event, which was followed by traditional wazwan.Similary, the second day i.e., the yenivol that took place in The Heritage, started with samovar kahwe and mithhe cxott (confectionery) as a symbol of the sweet beginnings in context of marriages. Further, the winners on-air contest of narrating the most funny malaal were given Mirchi Wartav (gifts) and some games were played before the dinner was served.The guest list included some famous names like, Umar Bin (KashmirFoodGram),Muskan Khan (MyHungerDiaries), Deepak Kapoor (DilSeTraveller) and many more. Team Mirchi aimed at sending invites with wrong spellings and mistakes, the idea being for people to ignore such little details and focus on the efforts of the hosts. This humorous approach was to create an example that there can be a saal (festivity) without malaal, that if we as a society will, we can grow over these little mishaps and be the wiser ones.Mirchi Team also undertook journey to Kulgam’s Srandoo village, which was recently in news for taking a pledge to limit wedding expenses. The whole village under the Auqaf committee has decided to shun the extravagant wedding customs, which organically will lead to lesser ‘malaal-daari’. The aim of the coverage was to bring the voice of this Kulgam village to the whole of Kashmir.Furthermore, Team Mirchi also hosted poetess Prof. Naseem Shafaie; a Sahitya Akademi award winner who spoke about the cultural background, traditional values, and community building associated with Kashmiri weddings.Being the yazman (the hosts) RJ Mehak said, ‘I have seen people take out loans for weddings and stretch beyond their means to appease people , if people did not fuss over less number of dishes or limited guests , weddings would be a much happier affair. I think it’s funny and sad that while no one wants the hassle of relatives and friends being upset and sulking over trivial issues when roles are reversed, we resort to the exact same behaviour. Things have to change with collective effort. The whole idea was to put the message forward in a fun, non-boring way, so that we attract people to the campaign and create impact’Adding to her RJ Madeeha said, ‘The response to the campaign is a testament to the fact that our satire worked. Over the past months, we have received hundreds of calls and messages of people narrating their malaal stories’.Yes, the aim was to create a fun campaign which also sent across a good message, but we wanted to take this opportunity to promote Kashmiri culture and of-course the rituals associated with weddings in our month long on-air and digital campaign, and this is just the on-ground culmination of the same’ said Yasir Majid, the content head for Mirchi.Finally, Station Head for 98.3 Mirchi Jammu and Kashmir, Arvind Dhiman closed the event with a thank you note for the team, the guests and the sponsors – Zum Zum: Milk Products, Manyavar, Asawir Jewellers, Gani Sons and Spectrum Advertising. ‘It is never easy to take ideas from scratch and execute something like this but kudos to my team Mirchi, our dear sponsors, guests and our audiences, which make all of this worth it’, he said.