When Heroes Fall

Hard as it is to believe now, Tarun Tejpal was my hero. Not just from his early Tehelka days when he took on the establishment fearlessly and showed us what journalism was all about but from 19 years back when he was the features editor of Financial Express and I was a rookie reporter into my second newspaper job. My most vivid memory of Tarun (beside that of him sprawled in the editor’s chair, his legs on the sacred editor’s table in his glass doored cabin, his laugh booming through office – which made me gasp in disbelief when I heard it for the first time); is of him walking into office in a blood stained shirt.

**

He had just returned from taking a road accident victim to the hospital in the gypsy he used to drive. In my eyes, cold blooded, power hungry editors didn’t do those kind of things. But he did. But then, he was different. Fearless, idealistic, bold and brilliant. That was the Tarun we knew. There are other memories too. Of Tarun, taking us (his team of young boys and girls) home for dinner – macaroni and chicken cooked by his charming wife Geetan. Of him in his bookshelf lined sitting room, drink in hand, cracking jokes, pulling legs, prophesying where each of us would be 10 years from then. Of him standing at his door, an arm casually around his wife, waving us off with a cheerful: “Don’t come back, you drunken buggers!”

**

For me, and most of us young reporters who joined him when he started the features section at FE, Tarun was the perfect boss. Not only could he write beautifully (he could; his India Today essays were legendary); he could pick the best stories, edit wonderfully, take a stand with the fearsome Prabhu  Chawla, then editor, fight for salary raises (not just his but yours too), take on the management. And then stride in with your contract and fling it casually on the table with. “It’s done. Go work now”. He was the kind of journalist every young aspiring kid in journalism school dreams of becoming and hardly anybody ever does.

**

In his denim shirts and casual trousers, he walked tall; he strode through the corridors of Indian Express with an easy familiarity, he laughed loud, his smile touched his eyes, his concern for people was genuine, he wore his intelligence lightly. From that first day when I knocked on his cabin door, biodata in hand, a nervous “Mr. Tejpal?” on my tongue; and he waved me in from where he was lazily leaning back in his swivel chair, arms clasped behind his head; with a: “Come on in. And call me Tarun;” he was the kind of person I wanted to be.

**

He would sit in his cabin with his long legs on the table, discussing story ideas and special supplements; addressing guys with the crassest of expletives and they would be delighted with the familiarity. If you walked late for a meeting, stuttering over an apology, he would just grin wider and say: :relax, just pull a chair and tell us what you got. “He would regale us with stories about the time he ran away from NDA or was it IMA, he would share with us scandalous celebrity gossip; yes even about editors who had prepositioned young girls, about how Shobha De’s beauty was greater than her writing. He would send us for assignments with the warning: Don’t come back with wide eyed stories. Use your brains.

**

Once when I called a colleague I didn’t get along with Jodie Foster and the complaint reached Tarun; he called me to his cabin. Rather severely he asked me what I had been calling the man since he was really upset. “Jodie Foster” I replied.  And Tarun burst into laughter and told me to get lost. “You guys make me feel like a school principal.” Now when I hear of salt mining scandals in Goa and murky political deals and unbelievable fallen behavior in lifts; it shakes the belief of nearly 20 years. Tarun was an awesome guy or so I always believed. What he has done (and he obviously has since he has written that sick apology of a letter) is heart breaking for all of us who equated journalism of courage and conviction with him. –