Vintage Vinod

Vinod Mehta’s memoirs, Lucknow Boy, could not have been published at a better time. We don’t have to agree with Press Council of India’s Chairman Markandey Katju’s prescription entirely to know what is wrong with Indian media today. Media criticism is the flavor of the season. It is written all over the wall.

 

Curious to know the inside story of the media industry I finished this unputdownable autobiography very fast. In Mr Mehta’s own words these memoirs are, ‘…the first rough draft of my history.’ He dissects his life like a seasoned surgeon. 

 

Fathering a daughter, when he was in London in 60s, and not having the courage to own her up, he has the temerity to call himself a ‘bastard’. And only a flamboyant editor like Mehta has courage to name his dog Editor!

 

Vinod Mehta, a self confessed ‘pseudo secular’, has the distinction of being an editor for the last 40 years. In this age when we no longer care to know and they no longer care to inform who are the editors (by the way do we know who are the editors of The Times of India and the  Hindustan Times?), it is a rare feat indeed.

 

Journalists have the privilege to see and report the events of a nation from close quarters. ‘Lucknow Boy’ doesn’t disappoint us, telling tales of our times with a pinch of salt.

 

We, who grew up in liberalized India, didn’t see Mr Mehta’s editorial skills when he was at the helm of Sunday Observer, the Indian Post and other publications. On a personal note, I knew Vinod Metha, the editor, in 1995, the year I came to Delhi. I vividly remember an October evening we were taking a stroll in Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi, a student hub for Bihari migrants, when I chanced upon a new news magazine, Outlook.

 

Before he joined as editor of Outlook, Mr Mehta was the famous editor of the infamous Debonair in the mid 70s. `‘Although I had become a full-fledged editor, I failed to penetrate Bombay’s esoteric social scene,’’ he bemoans.

 

Further recounting his Debonair days he writes, “Debonair’s name and fame grew by the year but it was unable to shed its smutty aura.’’ Mehta quotes former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajypee complimenting him, `‘Your magazine is very good, but I have to keep it under the pillow.’’

 

All the great editors are products of their times and the confidence they enjoy of their proprietors. This is amply evident from the experiences of Mr Mehta. At the Debonair, he enjoyed the confidence of the owner of the magazine Susheel Somani, and ditto for The Sunday Observer. But his stint at the Indian Post, launched in 1987, was short lived. Mr Mehta notes, ‘`The paper was looking good, the reader response was good but the management was terrible.’’ His relationship with owner of the Indian Post, Vijaypat Singhania, soured and the inevitable happened; he was fired in 1989. 

 

Soon after that Mr Mehta launched Independent, the same year, under the proprietorship of Indian Media’s ‘golden boy’ Samir Jain. Alas, it was just a 29 days wonder and Mr Mehta had to leave the Times network. It is little baffling why Mr Mehta is still all praise for Samir Jain, but has no qualms in blaming the ‘denigration and decline of Editor as an institution’ on Dileep Padgaonkar.

 

He writes about the licence quota raj in the 1980s and how news stories were killed, business interests served and editors were left unguarded at the mercy of ‘white elephants’ like Satish Sharma and Sharad Pawar.  

 

With the uproar of Mandal and kamandal in the air, a disenchanted Mr Mehta came to Delhi in 1991 to start  a new edition of the Pioneer under the proprietorship of maverick L M Thapar. After few months of bonhomie he notes, `‘my only worry was the proprietor.’’

 

Defying his own record of ‘being most sacked editor in India’, Mr. Mehta has been with Outlook for 15 years. Needless to say the credit goes to the proprietor of the Outlook, Rajan Raheja.

 

Mr Mehta writes, “When I go and meet the supreme editor-in-chief in the sky, I will tell him ‘Lord, I committed many small sins but on the big issues I remained entirely professional.’ And he had to pay for his ‘professionalism’ many times in his career. He has written at length how the NDA government targeted the publication and its proprietor.