Manjula lal’s protagonist, Manush, is a gifted, independent-thinking journalist who tries to maintain his professional ethics while balancing harmony between his body and soul. Excerpt:
During their short walk to the lion’s den, he avoided eye contact with Sateja, a quivering mass of nerves by now. In English journalism, he mused, you wrote only for the one percent elite who understand the subtleties of the language. No wonder readership was falling not because the general public had lost interest, but because English was not an emotive language for most. At the Republic, the employees were like Indian clerks trying to please a British overlord.
Computers were conspicuous by their absence in the Urdu section, with journalists wielding pens as they wrote, editing and proof-reading instead of using keypads. The edited matter would later be keyed in by typesetters, a dying breed of technicians who would soon be overtaken by scanning software that converted written/printed text into electronic images. Through a big glass partition the Hindi newsroom could be seen house full even during the lunch hour. If your boss is likely to be sitting in the office, you are less likely to be mooching at home watching TV or holding up the bar at the Press Club.
Azad, he could have predicted, was not sitting in an executive chair behind a desk piled high with paper. Such men hold durbars seated on comfortable sofas, surrounded by yes-men. Azad had three such men in attendance, who didn’t look like journalists. Seeing them, Manush knew he wouldn’t be shooed away, for every tussle from now on would be team sport.
Azad always wore white. Sometimes it was a white bush shirt over white pants, at other times a white kurta-pajama with white shoes. What was left of his thinning white mane was combed straight back, down to his shoulders. He looked like the actor Jitendra playing a mafia don whose strength obviously did not lie in his muscles. If he had got the idea of dressing like this from Hindi films, then he probably intended to be the villain of the piece.
Nor did his power lie in any facility with the pen, or background in communications. So how had he risen so highIJ On questions such as these hinges India’s future as a meritocracy — and its ability to rise out of feudalism and crony connections into true democracy. But we cannot grapple with such issues here, as there are more immediate matters at hand.
Sateja didn’t even bother to introduce him, so Manush did the honours for himself. He didn’t particularly want to shake the hands of these greasy men, but the marketing guys, for that’s what they were, wanted to go through the motions. It was like the ritualistic motions of the executioner before putting the noose on the condemned man’s head. Azad looked as if he was trying to judge how far Manush’s loyalty to Sateja went, or whether he could be made to betray the cause of the English department. Manush hoped he looked like the upstanding young professional, and not some lily-livered upstart. He didn’t need no godfather, though he could do with a raise.
Azad set the ball rolling by asking about the upcoming UP Assembly elections. Politics was the usual topic to break the ice, just as for the Brits it was the weather. When the talk veered inevitably to the Muslim vote, Azad looked self-important. Manush knew why. Gossip had it that Azad had promised his mentor in the Congress that he could swing readers of his media group, especially the Urdu paper, to the party. Manush doubted whether the readership was large enough or so easily swayed, but many such self-appointed khans were ingratiating themselves with the Congress. It was fly-by-night operators like Azad who made tall claims and got away with it, hosting iftar parties to make their way from the leadership’s stomach to its heart. That, and the fact that they spoke Urdu, the language of the Mughals, made even their deceptions so charming. Azad was a director of the media wing, which he projected as working assiduously for a secular democratic republic. Other con artists had set up small political parties and used rented crowds and colourful banners, hoping the obliging media would provide them free publicity. Which it did, having been indoctrinated into the need to do something for the ‘minorities’ who are actually 15 million-strong and the mass of whom gain nothing from such empathy, enabling the khans to laugh all the way to the bank, secretly nursing ambitions of the return of the glorious days when ‘So-and-so tashreef la rahe hai’ resounded in the great halls built in the Persian style.
Despite knowing all this, Hindu journalists too played the game that the natives did when the British ruled over the darkies. Only they subverted the Christian-Muslim agenda in their own way. It was a pity that they couldn’t articulate their deep discomfort with the way they disowned their own culture. like sexual repression, suppression of natural pride in one’s nationality and culture manifests itself in strange ways. Azad now said, with a grand flourish, looking sideways to the marketing guys for wah-wahs, what he really wanted to say. ‘The Supremo has asked me to work more closely with the English department to see that our political line is not wrong on the eve of elections. Also, we have many excellent reports in Urdu and Hindi which you should use, after translation.’
It was a good thing Sateja knew what was coming — thanks to his intelligence report on the meeting in Allahabad — otherwise he would have collapsed. He had seated himself on a straight-backed chair instead of the sofa, which was a good thing; otherwise his sweat would have stained the covers. Being forewarned, however, did not make his response more dignified. He succumbed to the obsequiousness that had helped him rise to the top and gushed-yes, exactly like a tap that has been turned on-in Urdu, ‘Absolutely. Great. This would be really wonderful.’
Azad’s eyes narrowed. He either didn’t believe the gush, or he was wondering why Sateja was not surprised. Giving a half-glance towards Manush, he said, ‘One of my boys can coordinate with one of yours. Because most of the time you and I are not in office.’ Sateja thought he had made his own absences sound justified and the English Editor’s a crime. Manush, however, felt relieved at this sensible suggestion that the boys should do the actual interaction. He felt he would be able to handle the coming impositions better than his boss, who simply did not know how to flex his muscles in a manner worthy of his position.
Now Azad played his trump card. It was already known in the building that when Sateja accompanied the prime minister on a visit to Seychelles last year, Azad had been miffed. He had asked his minions to find out how Sateja had swung it. But Sateja had left no trail of clues, and this remained one of those eternal mysteries that Press Club gossips would try to solve, off and on, for years. The gossip covered all angles-caste, creed, religion, corruption (all the things that can get a man a favour when merit fails) but could not determine how Sateja had wrangled the junket.
‘I’m accompanying the PM to France next week,’ he said. After pausing for effect, he added, ‘I’ll be sending despatches every 24 hours. You must carry them.’ Sateja’s face fell, and Manush thought the time was ripe for him to stop behaving like a part of the furniture, and assert himself. ‘But we are a weekly, Mr Azad,’ he said, although the first objection that leapt to mind was that a manager shouldn’t try to do a journalist’s job. ‘So we can only carry one report in our issue.’ He knew it was a two-day visit. ‘Maybe the Hindi and Urdu newspapers can carry a despatch every day.’ Azad made a dismissive gesture about the mass circulation papers, clearly wanting to see his byline in English. He was a little ruffled by Manush’s intervention, but it turned out the foreign visit would end on Tuesday, and he could file the report on his return, in time for that week’s edition. Manush insisted on knowing who would translate it into English, at which point Azad said airily he would be filing it in English. He added, unnecessarily, that his father had served the British in lucknow. Manush doubted him, but reasoned he might have a ghost translator.
Manush was the first to get up to leave, even though Azad had not yet dismissed the durbar. He muttered excuses and looked toward Sateja to see if he was getting up. Sateja came slowly to his feet, as if unsure whether the teacher had dismissed the class — or if his shaky knees would support him.
If I’m Birbal, he’s no Akbar, thought Manush, holding the door open to ensure Sateja left before him and didn’t stay back to play the court jester.
Edited excerpt from That’s News To Me! by Manjula lal, Readomania, Rs275