Vinod Mehta had derived his high sense of uprightness and integrity from his grandfather who said that one should learn to give and not to take. He stuck to his beliefs and proudly displayed them
Vinod would console me on my sacking from the Army, saying: “Hey, Ashok! I’ve been sacked several times more than you have.” By the time I was honourably re-instated, he had established some kind of a record by retaining the editorship of Outlook for 17 years. He was also the editor to publish my first column in any newspaper — The Pioneer — soon after it was revived by him in 1991. My sporadic but anonymous writings grew under his watch while I was still in uniform. The piece in the Debonair during the Emergency, titled, ‘Nuts and Bolts of a Coup d’etat’ got him into serious trouble. I had recently read Edward luttwak’s book on the subject and adapted it in graphic detail on how the military could execute a coup in India. Soon, intelligence sleuths were knocking on his door to find out the name of the author of the offending article. He saved me from being sacked 20 years earlier. He became very stingy when he was in Outlook and rarely took my pieces, and mainly for the ‘Diary’ page, provided the travelogue was really funny, he would stress.
I taught Vinod how to ride a bicycle. In lucknow in the mid 1950s, we had three bicycles at home — one belonged to our father, the other, a lady’s cycle, was our sister’s, and Vinod’s was rarely ride-able. Traffic was gentle those days and the only possibility of an accident was a collision with an overloaded rickshaw. With his hands in his pockets, Vinod would race down the Dilkusha Garden slope crossing the railway line to la Martiniere College, invariably late for class. In later years, the college was to honour The lucknow Boy.
We went our own separate ways — Vinod to explore England with all of eight dollars in his pocket and I joined the Army earning a princely monthly sum of Rs350. When Vinod returned with a dubious diploma in advertising, I invited him to visit the Army in Babina-Jhansi where I was posted as Brigade Major. He impressed everyone with his acquired British accent and wardrobe and lectured on geopolitics of the 1960s as seen by a 20-something Indian in london. He picked up a cursory knowledge of the Army, which in later years he developed into an abiding interest on exposing equipment scandals and learning about gossip in the military: Which officer was stealing the affections of which brother officer’s wife...
I would spend at least a week or two every six months with him in then Bombay. He introduced me to the advertising world and later to India’s pale version of Playboy, the Debonair magazine which he courageously brought out. Vinod has not acknowledged my contribution to his book, Bombay, for which I did a fair amount of independent research and added to the richness of his chapters on the red light area, Kamathipura. Soon after the 1971 war, where our battalion 2/5 Gorkhas fought, first in East Pakistan and later switched to the Barmer desert in the West, I came to Bombay for my post war R&R just as Vinod was celebrating the release of Meena Kumari’s Pakeezah album. In the cavernous and smoke-filled bar of the Ambassador Hotel, Vinod would enthral me with stories of his love life and the haunting melodies of Pakeezah. The 33 rpm record accompanied me back to Barmer where under a clear sky, Gorkha barmen mixed Old Monk with Chalte chalte, yuhin koi mil gaya thaa... A film is being made on Vinod’s Meena Kumari, the book which has inspired a movie, probably like the epic, Devdas.
Fast forward to New Delhi and our professional differences. Vinod is Editor, Outlook, and I the Defence Editor of Sunday, the rival. While I lambasted Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, for defying the Government for declaring its orders on appointments as ‘unimplementable’, Outlook staunchly defended Admiral Bhagwat and severely criticised the NDA Government for dismissing him. We would argue endlessly over Vinod’s whisky and keema-mattar dinners, the authenticity of our respective accounts. There were heated battles about Kargil, and accounts of the war in the two magazines could make war historians wonder if we were describing the same battle.
I can take credit for two turning points of Vinod’s life: His second marriage to Sumita, and his love for dogs. He became a forced bachelor for several years after his first marriage broke down; and I got married for the first time at the ripe young age of 55 after I left the Army (or rather after the Army left me). later, on re-marrying, Vinod confided, “I saw you both so happy that I decided to take the plunge again.” Aditi and I had two lovely Cocker Spaniels who brought us great joy and happiness. We lost both: The last to go was Snoopy whose story — Goodbye Snoopy — appeared in these columns in June 2009.
Vinod’s legendary affection for dogs followed his meeting with Chutki and Snoopy at our residence. He adopted a stray who rose to become Editor, the love of Vinod’s life. My nephew Rajat told me he saw tears trickle down Eddy’s face on the day of Vinod’s Chautha havan in his room. No Vinod column anywhere was complete without a mention of Editor who became his byline.
Vinod’s high sense of integrity and uprightness was derived from our grandfather, Bhagat Ram Talwar of Rawalpindi, where, in its Holy Family Hospital, Vinod was born on May 31, 1941, an entry he validated during a recent visit to Pakistan. Our grandfather, in his periodic sermons to us, would impart not just his knowledge of cricket, music and the arts but also how life was to be lived: “learn to give, not to take”, he would urge. For someone who lived a full life in England and Haridwar as an aristocrat and hermit respectively, he left his imprint all over Vinod. His bank balance told the story.
Vinod fought painfully to live for a full 100 days in the intensive care unit of Fortis and the AIIMS. I lit his funeral pyre and had the honour to perform his last rites. To me, he was first a friend then a chhota bhai. In Haridwar, his remains were immersed in the Ganga. The bar in the Mohamad Bagh Club lucknow has a timeless clock whose letters read: ‘It is early yet.’ The lucknow Boy could not put the clock back.