Gift of Gabo

“Today fact and opinion have become entangled: there is comment in news reporting; the editorial is enriched with facts. The end product is none the better for it and never before has the profession been more dangerous. Unwitting or deliberate mistakes, malign manipulations and poisonous distortions can turn a news item into a dangerous weapon… It is some comfort to believe that ethical transgressions and other problems that degrade and embarrass today’s journalism are not always the result of immorality, but also stem from the lack of professional skill. Perhaps the misfortune of schools of journalism is that while they do teach some useful tricks of the trade, they teach little about the profession itself. Any training in schools of journalism must be based on three fundamental principles: first and foremost, there must be aptitude and talent; then the knowledge that “investigative” journalism is not something special, but that all journalism must, by definition, be investigative; and, third, the awareness that ethics are not merely an occasional condition of the trade, but an integral part, as essentially a part of each other as the buzz and the horsefly.

Gabriel Garcia Márquez in an article titled ‘The Best Profession in the World’

“Dear Gabo, you once said that life isn’t what one lived, but the life one remembers and how he remembers it to retell it... your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all. It’s difficult to say goodbye to you, with all that you’ve given us! You will always be in my heart and in those of all who loved and admired you.”

Shakira, on Márquez

Márquez, the intrepid reporter, and not the great magic realism novelist and Nobel winner, once travelled with ‘Waka Waka’ girl Shakira for many days. Márquez covered her ‘live’ performances, backstage, documenting the hysteria that greeted Shakira everywhere she performed. Certainly, they had a special relationship of deep love and respect, and he wanted to discover her ‘live’ as a star on and off stage. In a long essay, ‘The Poet and the Princess’, published in The Guardian , London (June 8, 2002), ‘Gabo’ wrote:

“She’s been known to give up to 40 interviews a day without repeating herself. She’s got her own ideas about art, this life and the next, the existence of God, love and death. But her interviewers and publicists have tried so hard to get her to elucidate these views that she’s become an expert in evasion, giving answers more notable for what they conceal than what they reveal. She rejects any notion that her fame is fleeting and is exasperated by speculation that overexertion could damage her voice. ‘In the full light of day, I don’t want to think about the sunset.’ In any case, specialists think it’s improbable, since her voice has a natural range.”

Everyone knows about Márquez’s novels, especially, One Hundred Years of Solitude , Love in the Time of Cholera , Autumn of the Patriarch , Living to Tell the Tale , Leaf Storm: and Other Stories , among other great works of literature. Not many know about his seminal journalistic masterpiece News of a Kidnapping .

As we remember him on his death anniversary (April 17), many might rewatch the thrilling Netflix series on ‘Carlos’, the underworld mafia don who was the king of drugs in Colombia, and who outmanoeuvred the might of American law enforcement and intelligence agencies for years. Few would know the investigative reportage and meticulous documentation of the drug industry — including the kidnappings of top officials and family members by emaciated, young, trigger-happy, restless mercenaries, who kept their hostages away from food, water and the outside world. News of a Kidnapping was first published in Spanish, in 1996. An English translation followed the next year.

Márquez made Carlos — Pablo Escobar — an ordinary guy, doing what he thinks he must, conquering the world with drugs and killings, feeling sad but staying aloof as he watched a dog being shot by another don, watching unperturbedly people being shot dead, or turning the government’s powerful chess-game upside down with one masterstroke after another. Carlos, shadowy and inaccessible, was no mythical batman or a comic strip American superhero. He was real, as real as a man can be, with a devoted wife and a Robin Hood-esque image, so unlike the Italian epic of The Godfather , part one, two, three, with both Marlon Brando and Al Pacino becoming larger than life. Escobar was as ordinary as any man on the street.

This is far, far away from the great love story of rebellion and family traditions in a town called Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude , where the mother-figure, Ursula, blind, is able to spot every dead and living object in a mansion of memories and invisible legends. And that list includes Aureliano Buendia, who took up armed rebellion against oligarchy and American imperialism, now content with making goldfish in his hidden corner, as dead and alive like the sightless eyes of Ursula.

Equally distant is the love and longing of the man who celebrated unrequited love in Love in the Time of Cholera for years, which became unrequited centuries. Finally, when she agreed, it was true love.

Amit Sengupta is a freelance journalist based in Delhi

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