The Hindu Business Line : Veteran’s stint as trainee

Many years ago when one landed the job of a journalist trainee in the Times of India, not being able to get any other job, my friends in Calcutta were sure that one would be breakfasting with the Prime Minister, a morning and dining with the Finance Minister, a evening plus being one of the first to be on the roads covering riots.

“There will be a rainbow in your sky,” said my good friend A.V. Jayaraj. Nothing of that sort happened. It was just drab. Never has one supped with the mighty; it always was a life spending late evenings in an old, comfy Press Club which today stands renovated to look like a five-star hotel crawling with public relations officers and assorted fixers.

Now the same friends accuse me of crass incompetence and one does not dispute the charge. “You couldn’t make it,” said my friend Padmanabhan. The first assignments, after a few months of probation, were mostly annual general meetings of ordinary companies with the big names like TISCO and Telco (now Tata Motors) reserved for the seniors. That was a rule which was not strictly acted upon.

Usually, the seniors would walk up and tell one, “I have an important assignment. Please can you cover the AGM of Telco”. It was mostly a mandatory request and could not be jettisoned; the AGM had to be uncovered for the common man. AGMs were a bore as one never grasped the questions raised by shareholders nor the replies of the chairmen. Those were pre-TV channels and dodgy analysts’ days and the shareholders tried their hardest to show-off publicly.

At this point of time, one recalls the praise offered to the JRDs and Birlas when they presided over the AGMs of their companies. “Sir, we are told Parsis are generous souls and you Sir, Mr Tata, the world knows, have a big heart. We request you to give us bonus shares in a 1:1 ratio or at least raise the dividend and it will also help you,” a broker-cum- shareholder would exclaim to generous applause and a gracious laugh from JRD.

One waited eagerly for the sandwiches and tea (mostly a rarity) outside the halls at which the meetings were generally held. One trudged back to the office to give a five-lines report which would be carried after a week’s wait.

“Keep the copy short as there is no space,” my dear old friend Joseph Kurien would tell me. Never did a sub-editor ever tell a reporter there was enough space for his story. It has not happened, yet. If there were no AGMs to earn one’s keep, there would be seminars on every subject — including one on bullock carts – marked down for the bottomers, like this writer.

One should have easily covered at least 500 seminars on economic reforms and the financial system promising change and doing nothing thereafter. They usually started at 9 a.m., ended at around 5 in the evening with breakfast, lunch and tea assured. To get a good press — some five English newspapers, UNI and PTI — there would be a Union Minister to start the proceedings.

“I say, be there on time as a union minister is coming and give a good copy,” Kurien would tell this writer. To be at 9 at the Taj, the usual venue, one had to start from Dombivili at 7 and get smudged into nothing by the office crowd. Usually, ministers bunked the seminars and one waited patiently for the food — chapattis made by cobblers rather than chefs and some bhajis (the fare at all the seminars were the same) — as on a monthly salary of Rs 400 one never worked on a full stomach.

By around 6 one would hit the office and go searching for a Godrej typewriter as it was “peak time” with the seniors pretending to work. Kurien would deign to take a one para copy. Over years, one learnt the trick: Never be on time at seminars as the organisers always had spare copies of the minister’s speech. Usually, one landed about 30 minutes ahead of lunch to save cash. There was once a seminar (or was it a half-day briefing) on bullock carts. The organisers wanted the Indian scientific community to invent a yoke to ease the burden on bullocks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, aren’t you moved by the sight of an over-loaded cart pulled by dumb, suffering bullocks. Should not our scientists think of a yoke to help the bullocks cruelly whipped by their owners,” hailed the leader of the show. This writer was properly moved, came to the office and typed out a full-page report which was thrown into the dustbin by an enraged Kurien. “Bullock reports are not a part of the Business pages,” he said and that evening one looked like a whipped bullock. When one became a senior – or a veteran journalist, as the cliché goes – one did the same to one’s juniors and ran them hard. It is another thing that they never budged.

Business pages of the Times of India ran across 4.5 columns with share quotations and commodities taking more than half the space. Nothing interesting ever happened. The readable part was the City Notes column mostly written up by the seniors from press notes. It was sheer ecstasy when one’s first hand-out was taken in the City Notes column by Kurien.

In the evening, one went to Press Club and stayed put for the night. But then, unlike today, the serious reader of the Times of India in the morning would waste his morning coffee or tea reading the edit page and the edits in particular. News was never a talking point. Edits were, among readers and the edit writers. The edit page was akin to the sanctum sanctorum of a temple and the edit writers – editors and assistant editors – the priests or first borns.

When they wrote edits, none could disturb them with their Personal Assistants told to shut out the rarely tinkling phone lines put up by the government. Even a footfall was objected to.

Like some yogic expert, some of them would take a deep breath before glancing at old newspaper cuttings which their PAs bunched on their tables. Some of them smoked to get the perfect intro while others stared at their cabin walls for an impressive kick-start. Always they wore a funereal look. Their edits would quake the government, they hoped fondly.

Before sending them to the Big Boss, they would take at least a few hours to write and re-write their oracles. Edit-writer, Rajagopal from Business Standard and Financial Express, dubbed it as the passage of the copy to the dhobi for a wash and iron.

The proofs of the washed and ironed copy were again read by the edit-writer.

In the evening, one could see a satisfied and sweating edit writer walking out with a dated copy of Guardian and Economist tucked in his arm-pit; the PAs would follow with the bags.

If one got a chance to talk to this gentleman the next day, it would only be of his edit and how the Prime Minister was looking into the suggestions made. That editorial pompousness is still evident.

P. Devarajan

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