Mr Roy and 'Front-page Journalist' syndrome

Mr Roy was not a journalist, he was the journalist. Mumbai media world swore by his news gathering capabilities. He was bespectacled not for an eye disorder, but to spot news from a distance, he had an extra long nose just to smell news ahead of others.

He loved the sweet, intelligent bird like chattering psychiatrist Chirpy Bose, just in order to understand how an investment banker can reveal the biggest trans-national deal by committing some Freudian slip over an extended drinking session in some exorbitant Bandra pub.

Roy had developed a punch after guzzling hundreds of glasses of alcohol and overeating chicken platters every other day in the company of investment bankers. Mumbai media didn’t consider his sagging punch as an ordinary 'beer belly' but adorably termed it as the 'Roy belly'. The belly of dedication and journalistic excellence. The hundreds of alcohol glasses produced thousands of breaking stories on the number one financial daily that Roy worked with.

Mr Roy was courted by the editors of all top media houses with lucrative offers every weekend at the quaint, overcrowded Press Club near Azad Maidan, while the management of all top corporations wooed him with fancy dinners and other recreations at the finest luxury hotels and spas in and around Mumbai.

Roy stood like a granite rock, unfazed, not corrugated by any of the temptations. His only aim was to be on the front page of the number one pink newspaper. The pretty, bubbly Chirpy Bose sensed Roy is near the last leg of ‘Front-page Journalist’ syndrome, a thesis on which she did her post doctoral research and won many accolades across the world.

As Roy was close to insanity he found solace in football and as the world cup was on, he ignored Chirpy to such an extent that Chirpy stopped loving him and called him a nikamma old rooster. Roy, the rooster became a lonely man. His only friend was the front-page of the number one newspaper he worked for. As time passed, loneliness and alcohol consumed his passion, he missed his name on front-pages.

He still was considered the king of reportage by most of the media, but his happiness lied on the front-page appearance only.

After disappearing on the front-page for a consecutive five days Roy lost it. Roy tore all the fond photographs of Chirpy and David Beckham and also the numerous front-page cutouts he had pasted on his spacious bedroom wall. Roy was defeated, dejected and all very sad.

The blank looking Roy one day discovered a poster on the first-class train compartment he was travelling. It read, “108 times Chamatkari Baba Bangali Benareswale”..Mahayogi, mahagyani sare kaam sambhale. Pyar mein dhokha, bibika bhagna, jamin ka jhagda ho ya souten, chhudel ki samasya..baba sabarega bhag tumhara... kya stock market mein maal dubaya ya padosan ko dil de dia....sare uljhan ka haal jhatpat baba dega...chamatkari baba bangali...aaj hi ao taklif se niklo. To chup kyun ho aaj hin ao ya phir call karo 022-22222XXX , 10 lines. Credit card suvidha bhi uplabdh hai, milne ki dakshina sirf 1000 rupaye.

Milne ka pata Suite No 1001, Hotel Super, Kurla (East), near Champa Original Desi Bar, Police station ke baju mein.

Roy, though hesitant about confiding his problems of insanity and frontpage syndrome with such a hindustani speaking baba, but nevertheless he managed to call and take an appointment from Monika, baba’s personal secretary.

A Vuvuzela for Mr Roy

He is the most popular creature in Mumbai’s media world. He’s like the superhero of journalism roaming incognito in the streets of India’s financial capital. He’s got that extra long nose for news. He pokes into everyone’s affair. When everything seems alright he spots an inconspicuous anomaly and probes deeper.

When Mumbai sleeps he stays awake and files the biggest breaking stories that shake the Sensex the next morning.

Corporates respect him, peers envy him and women love him. He is for you the inimitable MITH*****. Sorry for the unexpected five stars after MITH. It’s his towering personality that has forced me settle for the stars. Let’s call him Mr Roy (name intentionally changed to protect identity).

Mr Roy, besides news sniffing has two interests in life – football and travelling from Vashi to Andheri in Mumbai’s suburban trains on Sundays -- which invariably fits into his chock-a-bloc schedule.

For football lover Roy, FIFA world cup is like the best time in his life and he makes it a point to watch every match live. Roy comes home early in the evening and jogs around in his three-by-three feet balcony overlooking a mosquito breeding pond and a proposed mango orchard, where the mango trees are yet to be planted.

Roy claims the run between kitchen and balcony melts his extra kilos.

Well, enough of jogging. Now Mr Roy switches on his television to watch the match between Uruguay and France.

All excited, tea sipping Mr Roy jumps, laughs and bites his nail in excitement whenever the ball reached near the goal post on either side. Roy says he doesn’t support any team and every team which plays world cup football is worth supporting.

The excitement increases further in the match but Roy suddenly looks silent. Vuuun…vuuunn..vuuun..vuun..vun..vun the sound continues. Roy know there is something missing here.

No one of his neighbors, mostly nuclear scientists, would be playing something so stupid that too during a football match. But the sound continued vuun …vuun..un..un…He went to the balcony and found no movement outside. Children in the newly built shanties at the proposed mango orchard were playing cricket, while their parents were playing cards.

He then thought may be the mosquitoes in the adjacent pond which is being filled for building a new luxury tower, are to be blamed but his intelligence told mosquitoes do not have such a strong voice and to create such audible sound you need all the mosquitoes in Mumbai jamming in a studio.

The picture outside was serene. But the voice grew louder and the pattern more frequent. In his detective style he walked silently and put his large ears near the television. Suddenly there was loud vuuu which almost damaged his ear drum. Now he knows it. The poor five year old television has lost it. It’s sick now and is expressing with cough and coarse voice during the football match.

Roy suffered the match and got up early in the morning. Before even brushing his teeth, he called Atif Aslam, the namesake of the Pakistani pop singer and the plumber-cum-electrician-cum watchman and much more to the housing society. At one call Aslam was at his tenth floor apartment.

He opened the television and claimed there was some problem with internal speakers. Roy shelled five hundred rupees and went with his daily schedule. Today is an important match. Argentine vs Nigeria. Roy though claims all teams are equal, has actually secretly been endorsing the Latin American country by making his permanent Gmail status as Waka waka tis time for Argentina and has already been beaten by two English and Brazilian fans in his office for such brazen support.

Anyways now on day two Roy switches the TV set no noise. Match starts noise starts. He loses his patience and calls Aslam immediately, who cuts his call five times. Roy is furious. Bugger is this time to cut calls the real match is on and this TV is shouting. Disappointed he mutes the TV and watches. Aslam in the meantime messages back in Hindi saying, “boss samjha karo ek din to chhuti milti hai Bandstand pe baitha hun baad mein baat karte hain.”

Roy fumes in anger and decides to buy a new television the other day. Unable to sleep he watches Ram Gopal Varma directed James movie, his all time favourite, on his Acer laptop. Whenever Roy fails in life he draws inspiration from the hero in James who beats all odds to achieve his target. Others however don’t understand the inspiration part; anyways most have not seen the movie.

While watching James for the third time nonstop, the newspaper boy throws the Times of India newspaper into his balcony. He runs to get the paper while thinking about the hawker. “This is the problem with this country… everyone can throw it like a cricketer but no one can bend it like Beckham.” “How can people breathe so easily without playing football in this country?

Then in his mind he blamed it on Neheruvian socialism which destroyed teamwork and promoted a individualistic game like Cricket. Suddenly he stops and what he reads. "People want to ban irritating noise at world cup soccer." He read the noisy instrument is called Vuvuzela. He sighs and laughs at him and falls asleep while James was still playing on his laptop.

(Mr Roy thought of keeping this secret to himself till he had two small pegs of whiskey. This story is fictional and doesn’t resemble to any character except Mr Roy in real life.)

The decade ends; remembering poppy flowers, ghats, rock pythons and friends

In past few days, I had a sudden consciousness about losing or going past another decade, the third one in my life.

When you think voluntarily, the recollections become vivid, unpredictable and leave you with sighs and mild laughter depending on what situation has appeared from memory lane like calling up a rare video from YouTube.

It comes up in your mind all the time. While preparing a cup of pepper-mint special tea for yourself on a Sunday morning, while jogging inside the small park in your locality, while travelling in a jam-packed Mumbai suburban train or even while chewing a Kalkattia mitha paan from the local cigarette and paan vendor in posh south Mumbai after office hours are over.

The first memory I had was of the undergraduate university days in eastern Uttar Pradesh. My university consisted of large colonial academic structures, a whitewashed small Chapel and vast stretches of green farm land and Orchards spread over 600-acres on the banks of mighty Yamuna River.

The 100 year-old campus was secluded from the crowded Allahabad city, separated by an old dilapidated Naini bridge that officially expired in 1970, but was able to support five-million-strong city populace, hundreds of passenger trains and every logistics carrier on its way from the north down Madhya Pradesh.

The winter months of December 1999 and January 2000 were full of hope and hesitation thanks to the the next century will be India's optimism, world will end fear, Y2K buzz etc. Those were also the months of floriculture practical classes for us. We were given small plots to grow and identify flowers. There was faint love affair with the delicate flowers in an otherwise boring and secluded campus. Three flower patches -- gladiolus, carnation and poppy – were in my kitty.

I loved of all, the bulbous red and pink poppy flowers which belonged to the Papaver genera popularly known as the Oriental or Opium poppy . When I remember how I welcomed this decade and millennium, tossing poppy flowers on windy wintry evenings instantly appear on my mind.

The early years of the decade also remind me of the morning and evening Yoga classes in another University in neighouring city of Benares, the mindless but spiritual wanderings on hundreds of ghats of the 3000-year-old settlement, the occasional association with bhang and regular listening to BBC Radio to improve English pronunciation and soft old Bollywood songs on Vividh Bharti to get a nice sleep.

The long hours spent in the huge lighted central library of the university, where I was the only one reading The Economist, Times and The New Yorker always taunt my present day painful reading adventures on a bean bag in my small sub-urban apartment balcony in Mumbai.


The memory lane also took me to my early days with the Indian Express newspaper in Delhi. The support from the Police, the threat from a builder and the protection from another bigger builder while doing a particular story was interesting.

A year in solitude, when I dared to craft a dream livelihood intervention project in southern Jaharkhand districts, and failed against the system touches me till date. I still remember the early morning trips to impassable villages crossing torrential rivers and rock pythons with a passion to connect with village women and build self-help groups for them.

The passion that forced me to try for cheaper innovations for the villagers.... How aggressively I fought with the local bank employee, when he passed lewd comments against my clients a 27 year-old Oraon tribal woman, whom I called didi, and her 14 year old daughter Chini, when they had approached the bank for a loan to buy a goat to sustain their six member family. There were many haunting moments that come to the memory but I have no words or intention to shock myself or readers.

The later half of the decade showed me journalism of different shades. Investigative, page 3, human, colourful and business. I travelled across many parts of India, exposed to its diversity and unique blending propositions.

Living in two megacities -- Delhi, followed by Mumbai – has been less than fun but an immersing affair. Witnessing the mindless terror acts and being a victim of one left me a changed person, almost like a new born.

The greatest discovery of the decade for me, were friends, who stood by me at all costs involved. That was the most permanent and satisfying discovery precious than hitting crude oil blocks or gold mines or even being nominated for a Nobel.

Orissa, mining, marriage and smartphone

On an early December evening two news agency journalists and an investment banker were travelling in a crowded intercity train into the mining and industrial belt of Orissa. The three hour journey seemed longer than usual.

It was pronounced winter, cramped train coaches and jostling of people from all walks of life - executives, government employees, fruit/chat vendors and daily labourers – catching the last train to the mining hinterland of Orissa. The three from Mumbai were on a their way to a journalist friend’s wedding in Angul, industrial capital and the most centrally located city of Orissa.

The immobility inside the train forced them to converse relentlessly in order to evade the drudgery of the small yet tough journey. Topics discussed varied from whether to sell gold just when it has hit the peak to the charisma of Obama that was worthy a Nobel. Heated arguments followed and the intellectual cells of the brain were stimulated.

The concentrated intellectuality was also lightened by some talk of women, i-pod and twitter, but it couldn’t beat the pursuit of talking about money and economy. The three realised they despite there humble background were talking something incomprehensible to their fellow passengers, who were dumbfounded.

The three realised exposure to metro-life and education has already created a water tight compartment between them and their own people who are pressed against them in this cramped coach, who speak their own language and about their own region.

A quick realisation was enough to stop the discussion about stock market, 8 percent growing economy, mergers/acquisitions, investment banker fees and switchover to local issues. The three spoke to their co-passengers in Oriya about the best trains in the route, new industrial development coming up in their neighbourhood and how is the government paying after the sixth pay commission report was implemented. It was relaxing to all of them.

The three finally reached their friend’s wedding reception and joined the celebration dinner. Here they were surrounded by locals, many of them related to the the hundreds of small and large neighourhood industries.

They overheard two of them talking in distress about China’s pressure tactics about lowering the offer price of some commodity.

One of them soon recalled a coverpage story he did about black gold (iron ore) and China some years ago. The three soon discussed how thousands of small time exporters have turned rich overnight by exporting minerals primarily iron ore from Orissa to China, world’s biggest steelmaker. However, with insatiable demand and import monopoly Chinese authorities are deciding prices in the past few months.

While chatting over Orissa's mineral policy and unknowingly meandering through the large open air banquet space the three spotted the glowing faces of the bride and groom which reminded them of their own families.

The gorgeous pink designer lehnga and neatly tailored western suit was making the couple look like one of those from the Shahrukh Khan starring Bollywood movies. Both of them were sitting on two large princely chairs, ususal in most Indian weddings.

At the entry of the marriage hall there was red ticker going on intermttently --Devidutta Weds Purabi-- all in capital letters. The guys joked, it looked a ticker on a television set or a news platform.

The groom, a telecom reporter and the bride, an engineer were trying to hold eachothers' hands in the absence of few attentive eyes but had to soon stay away from eachothers like a playful couple in a garden.

The groom, 48 hours ago on his wedding day amused everyone by his typing skills on the his smartphone. The instrument was in his hands even as he was tying knots with the bride. Whether it’s his affiliation to technology or effort to update his status on Facebook, the invasiveness of the tech revolution was loud and clear.

The bride also earned some reputation 48 hours ago by beating hands-down the technosavvy groom in a thousand-year-old game of finding the cowdy. The groom complained about the sharp nails of the bride going against him.

The three idiots had a nice wedding experience afterall.

(all characters here are fictitious and don't bear any resemblance with anyone living or dead)

26/11 Survivor's Account: Good News 5- Friends: The gems I have discovered

I never thought of living life without friends. I have been gregarious all my life, but never did I have to discover who’s a real friend or not. The events of 26/11 taught me everything. More than the survival I was happy with the discovery of the gems who were always with me.

The night Mumbai was attacked and by coincidence I was injured my friends and coworkers most of them journalists were shattered. Most of them stayed awake in the night or tried their best to reach me breaking the security cordon across Mumbai. My colleagues and friends across the world at different time zones were trying to find more about me.

My younger sister, the only relative in Mumbai, was well protected by my friends and their families during the uncertain night. At the break of the dawn, my friends Feroze, Geetha, Ankur, Piyush, Debiprasad, Mehul, Anup, Keshab, Abhishek, Dhananjay, Abhineet assisted in my smooth transition to a private hospital, which brought me a speedy recovery and prevented any possible infection from the bullet wound.

Rama, Narayanan, Arshad, Sumit, Devidutta, Swati, Nandita, Rouhan, Samrat, Shubha, Himangshu, Krittivas, Archie, Raghu, Shubhra, Trupti, Radha, Hari, Durgashis, Balaji and many others made me feel good through their constant assuring presence both physically and over phone.

Hundreds of friends also reached me over social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. And believe me every wish had healing power and made me positive.

The days of healing and surgery was special with friends always around. Geetha, doing special cooking for me everyday and Feroze doing the extra work to get back early in the evening.

Mehul bunking office in an impossible situation for being present with me.Narayanan and Piyush bringing me delicacies of south and north India, and Ankur zipping around in his car for every small need made things so good for me.
The instances of Feroze, the coolest man I have ever seen, fighting with the government hospital authorities for discharging me and Geetha fighting with the insurance company will alway be remembered.
Despite mentioning only a few instances I have vivid memory of the gestures everyone made during time and will remain me forever.
Wish Lord everyone earns such great friends.
I think knowing Kishor and my friends is the greatest happiness I have in this life so far.