IT all began in a suite of dusty rooms at the then-government-run unglamorous Lodhi Hotel on a couple of tables and chairs, random couches with mouldering upholstery. A makeshift office where a pouty-mouthed Vinod Mehta would interview us before grunting, “And when can you join?”
Every morning was about coffee, joyous whoops of welcome to yet another new recruit from the fraternity, excited chatter at the Press Club of India and hotel coffee shop lunches. And then we moved to our office! Cheek-by-jowl with Kamal Cinema and, more happily, right next to Rajinder Dhaba: home of legendary tandoori chicken.
We tumbled into the three-storied building like excited school kids: racing up and down the staircase checking out our desks, swivel chairs, PCs, a library stewarded by the whip-wielding Alka—“No, you cannot take this copy of Esquire, Sunil, because the design section wants it”—and the all-important Accounts section where our taxi/ travel bills were reimbursed as we tore around town gathering material for our inaugural dhamaka.
And what a resounding dhamaka it was!
Vinod set the cat among the pigeons with that controversial Kashmir poll story: an overwhelming Kashmiri majority did not want to be a part of the Indian Union. They voted for Azadi. We used that as a headline on our cover. He/ We were not dubbed seditionists/ anti-nationals (this was 1994, remember? The vocabulary of political discourse was… ahem, different), but TV talking heads and rival editors went batty. We’d given them much to natter about!
We’d tasted blood!
We were on a roll!
この記事は Outlook の August 11, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Outlook の August 11, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Criminal Amnesia
The focus may have now shifted to the Kolkata gang rape case, but questions about the sexual violence in Manipur since May 2023 remain unanswered
To Rape A Wife
Survivors of marital rape face twin hurdles: a lack of legal framework to deal with these cases and the social stigma that comes with reporting them
A City Violated
Public outburst of anger over the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata has left the Mamata Banerjee government puzzled, worried
The Forest of Loss
From a legal perspective, justice appears to have been served in the 2017 Gudiya rape and murder case at Kotkhai, Himachal Pradesh. But several questions persist
Here, Nobody Speaks of the Wounds
Muhammad Iqbal Shah's 14-year-old cousin was gang-raped and murdered at Handwara town, Kupwara, in 2007. The family is still trudging along the long road to justice
She Must Have Been Afraid
The 2012 Delhi gang rape is reflective of a systematic failure to cleanse the societal malaise
The Burning Woman
UP has the highest rate of crimes against women, and the district of Unnao has seen some of the State's most gruesome cases
Naked (vs.) Justice
On March 14, 2006, Latabai and her son, six, were paraded naked in a village in Solapur. Less than six months later, four members of a Dalit family were paraded naked; mother & daughter were allegedly gang-raped
Songlines of Chambal
How do the residents of Sheikhpur Gudha, Phoolan Devi's village in Uttar Pradesh, remember her: as a survivor, a rebel, a leader?
Don't You Remember My Story?
A child gang rape survivor's 12-year long ordeal in Sikar, Rajasthan shows how calls for punishment of perpetrators don't always mean empathy for the victim