Somethings in life do not change.....

Flashback 2000. I worked with Tata Infomedia Ltd as a Business Development Executive at the Amba Deep branch in Connaught Place, New Delhi. As my work timings were from 9 in the morning to 5:30 in the evening, I usually left office on time to catch a chartered bus back to my place at Ambica Vihar. As a rule, I never did overtime. Infact I was notorious for leaving office at 5:30 pm sharp much to the anguish of my fellow workers who passed their time chatting in their extended work hours as they had no families to go back  to and lived mostly on paying guest accommodation. Of course, at times they had work too.

In one of those rare occasions I happened to stay back in office till 7 PM for some work. As I left office, I found that it was raining profusely outside and there was no way of reaching the bus stop without getting drenched in rain. As I reached my stop, I found that most of the buses that plied on my route had already left while the others were bursting at the seams because of a heavy rush of people trying to escape the fury of the rain gods. Struggling to find a way, I stood there clueless as it had already started to get dark.

Just then I saw a rickety Bajaj Chetak stop near me with the rider wearing a helmet and a raincoat. It was Manu, my colleague who occupied a seat next to me at office and was a Sr. Sales Executive for Better Photography. He had recently shifted from Yellow Pages office in Patel Nagar and my first impression of him was that of a gorging uncle like personality always interested in other’s lunch boxes. I am calling him an uncle like personality as he never wore jeans and T-shirts those days. He would always be dressed in formal trousers, shirts and a tie with black shoes and his trademark moustache.

Manu at that time lived at Rohini and he offered me a lift back home. I had no choice so I accepted the offer readily. There were the two of us riding on a feeble ancient two wheeled junker (Sorry Manu) in a rainy weather hoping every moment that the scooter will not give way before I reached my destination. The traffic in Delhi gets worse at such times and since the metro was under construction those days, there used to be utter chaos at Patel Nagar and we were stuck there for presumably more than the expected time.  Suddenly my padosi started developing his signature hunger pangs and felt the need to eat something chatpata. Till today Manu is the most chatora of all my male friends ever. So he convinced me for a quick bite and started gushing into the bylanes of Patel Nagar to land at a Tikkiwalla Chat counter. There we were standing under a make shift shelter dripping heavily  from all corners relishing those lip smacking hot tikkis as it kept on  raining cats and dogs over us.

Satiated Manu was ready with his Chetak but to my horror it refused to start. He said it was usual and will take a few minutes. With some of his time tested tricks he managed to get it rolling and we again started our sojourn. We talked about many things on the way and got to know a lot about each other. As I reached  home, as a goodwill gesture I invited him for a cup of coffee. And to my horror he accepted the invitation. I have always been a reluctant personality who never mixed up easily and maintained a distance from people. So we had a hot cup of coffee at my home and I conveyed my thank you notes to Manu.

This was the starting point of our friendship. We were destined to be friends. Very soon we developed a bond and became each other’s most trusted aides. During our friendship we have shared many such moments. Working in Photo Asia and AV Expo had its own share of thrills and so were our usual fights over office issues. I can proudly say that I have seen Manu grow from a log cabin to the White House. Always a hardworking man and a die-hard optimist, he has strived to reach the position which he truly deserves. Somehow life had been unfair to him during the initial phase of his life. He never got his due in Infomedia and became an Area Sales Manager at least six years later than he should have. But being a workaholic he has changed his luck to grab every opportunity and reach on top of the corporate ladder.

Circa 2012. We planned to meet nine years after we had left Infomedia. Though I had visited his place and he had come to Jaipur in between,  those were more of formal family meetings. Now the time had finally come where we could recreate the old times. I don’t know why but for a minute I  actually emancipated a Bajaj Chetak to stop and me sitting as a pillion rider visiting an eatery where we usually fought over as to who was going to pay the bills.  But life has come a full circle in these 10 years. As Manu called me to ask about my whereabouts a swanky new Toyota Fortuner stood in front of me with him rolling down the window panes for me. Indeed, he has changed a lot. I could smell the air of exuberance around him as we rolled back those golden times.

Manu has become a busy man today. He received calls on his swanky mobile every minute and he managed to coax the callers that he would call back once he parked his car. But as expected, the essence of this man has still not changed. He still chose a modest place to sit where we could have our fill and chat informally about old times. We talked incessantly over the things in the past and life at present. We shared our food and life. This time for a change we did not fight over the bill and my once miserly friend gifted me a chic HTC phone.

For a busy man like him, sparing his peak time was a big thing. I don’t know how much business he might have lost in these two hours he spent with me as I was my usual barbarous types with him. Without having any mercy on this persevering and dynamic Country Marketing Head, I made him hover around the busy Janpath market for roadside shopping. Poor Manu followed me without any complaint carrying his laptop bag on his one shoulder and answering in conference calls right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of market. This is the magic of old friends. Even when you meet after ages, you remain the same good old selves.

Really, somethings in life do not change, for everything else, there is MasterCard. 

The day I donned a journalist’s robe

The coveted day finally arrived when I realized my dream of being a journalist. So far, I had only heard the stories of how newspapers are made, stories filed and designs approved. But this time, I got a firsthand experience of the same..

When I got an opportunity to write and conceptualize a 3 day newsletter covering the prestigious Bharatiye Pravasi Divas, I was in double minds. Would I be able to carry it off? Would I be able to complete it by myself? To add to it, I had no help, no translators and no editors? But something in my heart said that I had to do it at all cost. I could not have lost this chance at any cost. I was being told that I would get all the readymade coverage which I will have to translate, which didn’t seem to be a herculean task. Journalism has always fascinated me and I wanted to test my mantle in it.

Finally it was decided, Jyotsana Arora was to be the editorial consultant for the Pravasi Meet who was to cover the proceedings from the office, taking leads from the Hindi newspaper team and translating them in English. However, it did not turn out to be a cakewalk. The work that was to start from January 8, started on January 6 itself, courtesy the miscommunication between the marketing and sales people. I could have got an idea what a messy affair it was going to be for me if I had been into a media organization before.

Situated at Kesar Garh, the office was a huge fort like structure. Upon reaching there, Madam Jyotsana got to know that there is going to be no editorial support and no leads from the Hindi team. The interviews are to be conducted by me; the proceedings are to be covered by none other than me. So I was being asked to reach the Birla Auditorium and find out matter to fill my 4 pages.

Not to talk about the technological challenges faced by me. Their computers looked like type writers. It had no spell check and no yahoo mail. There was no printer in the immediate vicinity of atleast 500 meters. So when one gives a print command one has to travel all the way from one part of the fortress to the other. And in case (which was always a case most of the time) the print command did not work and failed to generate the print, I guess I don’t need to express. No amount of words can explain the anguish of the person who will travel back to complete the cycle again and hope for the right result. 

The designer I worked on the first day seemed to be was word blind. I will call him word blind because going by his work; I doubt  he would even be able to spell an apple, (God bless him) which meant, this was also to be done by me. To add to it, I had the dumbest person as my boss. I cannot bear this man for more than 3 days and in case I bang into him on the fourth, I am gonna shoot him. This person would repeat the same thing 10 times a day to the people and still does not get the results. I rejected him outright and decided the pages according to my insight. The best part is that the idiot didn’t even realize what I had done him in the end.

So now coming to my first day at the convention Centre, there I was, with a letter pad in my hand, a press card in my neck and a photographer at my beck and call. My heart swelled with pride while there were shivers going down my spine. But somehow, I carried it off. I decided to cover the ongoing preparation before the big day and gave special focus on the NGO’s who are trying to make difference in society. There was a ray of hope in their eyes and they wanted me to publish their pics and their cause in my edition. I also got myself clicked with HIV positive people. My story for day one was ready to be filed.

Day 2 was even worse, as I had to fill 8 pages and I had no expectations from the editorial. The intern did not turn up and I was alone.  But this time I had a better designer and had planned a draft to fill these pages. I covered a press conference and wrote on it. Cooked up a story on the cultural evening that was to be held at night but still the pages were left. That was the first time when I actually felt like a journo, with deadline approaching, piles and piles of work pending and the clock already showing 10 in the night. Two stories I had made did not find a place in the newsletter as they got extra advertisement in the end. So much of my effort had gone waste. But I guess that a part of a reporters job. First finding ways to fill gaps, then having futile fights with the marketing department and in the end, ending up giving your space to an advertisement. But somehow, the genius in me braved all this (:p) and I was free to come back at 12 in the night (big achievement as at one point I even contemplated the idea of spending the night there.. hahhahaahha)

On my last day I was being told to come at 3pm, but I woke up to a call from office which said that I had to report immediately at the auditorium as I had to interview some big shots. But upon reaching there, I realized that there was none, my Sunday morning already wasted. The day was spent at the venue gathering details about my feature story on the Pravasis. I did a full page on it and completed the other pages and proof reading. The patrika website I was relying on proved to be a crap as they uttered stupidity in every word. But still, the eight pages were filled, though not perfect by my standards but still, much much better than the patrika coverage online. My creativity said that I could have done better.

However, I was swelled with pride when I got a call from the GM who appreciated my efforts and my ability to carry the newsletter on my shoulders without any editorial support. The biggest thing I got was an offer to join the group full time. Better still, I was treated like a celeb when I went to school with my newsletter in my hand.  

These 3 days, though difficult, have given valuable experience to me. I have lived the life of a journalist in these days, eating, drinking and sleeping my newspaper. What an amazing thing this newspaper is!!!!! It might be costing 2-3 Rs, but one cannot imagine the handwork of hundreds of people that go into making of a daily paper. It has much more value in my eyes now than before especially when I know that every line we read in it, is cross checked by so many people. The designs that are edited a number of times and not to forget the last minute changes. Hats off to all the media people that are involved in the process.  Kudos to my media friends who have been into this line and still manage to have happy families……..