This book is a collection of writings of a veteran journalist written over a period of more than two decades.
The author, late journalist SK Rau, worked in this newspaper from the late 1940s to the early 1970s as the Chief Sub Editor and News Editor, before taking over as Editor of The Searchlight , Patna (which now comes out as The Hindustan Times). Starting in the 1930s as an occasional short story writer of TheSunday Times (a Chennai weekly), he moved over as cub reporter of the same newspaper.
The book has been divided into three sections. Many unknown facets of the style of functioning of the first four Governors of UP are detailed in the first. One gets a vivid idea of the first incumbent Sarojini Naidu’s disdain for observing the niceties of the position and her oratorical skills, the stickler that Homi Mody was of Constitutional form and decorum, while lacing his utterances and speeches with a sense of humour, the immense power that Munshi wielded in the day-to-day governance of the State, which authority, surprisingly, was willingly permitted by successive chief ministers and the passive, lacklustre tenure of the fourth Governor VV Giri.
Researchers and students of journalism will benefit immensely from the second section, which profiles some of the eminent editors of Rau’s generation. The Section provides a ringside view of an editor’s demand for absolute freedom — even freedom to attack the proprietor and his policies.
The third and last section profiles some of UP’s Chief Ministers (Sampurnanand, C B Gupta, and Charan Singh) and politicians (Ram Manohar lohia and Raj Narain) who held centre stage during the first two decades of Independence by their machinations and fads.