I first met Om Prakesh Malik in 1995 in New York City when I started Forbes.com in a borrowed office at the magazine’s headquarters on lower Fifth Avenue. It was the very early days of Internet publishing, and I struggled to find writers who could realize my vision for the project as something more than just a digital version of the print product. I needed writers, especially tech journalists, who were willing to take a risk with their careers and dare to invent a new form of journalism. Then I met O.P.
Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I worked out of a closet in the office I shared with five others because I needed a door to have some privacy when interviewing candidates. No windows. No air. Just a steel desk, two chairs, a lamp and a phone. I kept the door open when I listened to my voice mail, and one distinctive voice started to make a daily appearance, a very polite voice that verged on the obsequity, a distinctive New Delhi accent that asked for the same thing day after day. The voicemails were long and a bit difficult to understand, but always very flattering, complimenting me on stories I had written years before. His resume rolled out of the fax machine. He was working for a Japanese financial newswire. He also had a website: desiparty.com, a guide to NYC nightlife for “NRIs” like himself (Non-Resident Indians) No journalists at that time had websites.
“You know you have to call him in so we can see what he looks like,” Michael Noer told me.
I called him in and hired him on the spot. Om Prakesh Malik was the best hire I ever made. In time he became one of my best friends. He introduced himself as “O.P.” and so he shall always remain in my mind.
He died last week (June 24) from the failing heart that nearly killed him in 2007 but didn’t. He told me last winter that the two decades since his heart attack were “gravy.”
I won’t rewrite his obituary. There has been a flood of them, including one in the New York Times which would have made him blush. Matt Mullenweg’s remembrance is especially poignant.
Om wasn’t a braggart, he was —for all of his amazing networking skills— a very private, unassuming man who craved being unplugged and outside with his beloved Leica. He was also a bon vivant and raconteur who loved his scotch and his Dunhills. Many a night we abused the Forbes expense account at Steak Frites next door to the Forbes.com newsroom.
I will always remember him standing on a Soho Street one summer evening, cigar in the corner of his mouth, his arm around two stunning models, urging me to join them for a dosa at a new Indian restaurant some friends had just opened. “C’mon chief! It’ll be fun.”
Looking at my inbox and scrolling through years of emails with him, invitations to his 50th birthday party, questions about my take on some company or tech trend, advice on how to get in shape after his heart attack, invitations to get on Zoom and catch up. It’s so sad to remember and realize, like his last blog post, “Taking a Few Days Off” that there won’t be any more calls or emails or reminiscences about those few wild years in the mid-90s when we were building something new and great.
Few passings have hit me as hard as Om’s has. Losing a friendship that lasted over thirty years hurts deeply. I know he meant so much to many, and my condolences go out to his family. Goodbye my friend. And thank you.
