SHEKHAR GUPTA - WALK THE TALK

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Copyright NDTV 2017

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CONTENTS

Narendra Modi

Pushpa Kamal DahalPrachanda

P.V. Narasimha Rao

Manmohan Singh

V.P. Singh

Nawaz Sharif

David Cameron

Pranab Mukherjee

Sonia Gandhi

L.K. Advani

Rajnath Singh

Arun Jaitley

Nitish Kumar

Mayawati

K.S. Sudarshan

M. Karunanidhi

Mulayam Singh Yadav

Henry Kissinger

Arun Shourie

P. Chidambaram

Arun Singh

Jyoti Basu

Parkash Singh Badal

P.N. Bhagwati

Harkishan Singh Surjeet

INTRODUCTION

For a dyed-in-newsprint hack like me, television was always a matter of exotic curiosity. My first few experiences with the medium were patchyand I am being kind to myself. The first ever, oddly, was live, and in the service of Prannoy Roy, the anchor, in the Doordarshan studio in New Delhi. In the summer of 1988, national politics could scald you faster than Allahabads 49-degree temperature. V.P. Singh had led a post-Bofors rebellion against Rajiv Gandhi, resigned from the cabinet and Lok Sabha and was fighting for re-election against the Congress. This was the fight of the decade, and ultimately set the stage for Rajiv Gandhis defeat and V.P. Singhs ascent as an unlikely prime minister, though his coalition was eventually short-lived. I was in Allahabad covering that election for India Today magazine, for which I then worked. Incidentally, it was in this election that Kanshi Ram made his debut, surprised everybody by the number of votes a rank outsider like him polled and gave the first indication of the force BSP was going to grow into. Prannoy was anchoring the election results coverage for DD and asked if I would be willing to do a couple of pieces to camera (P2Cs) for him, live from Allahabad, as counting progressed. He said it would be a breeze. I said, Yes, it sure would be. Only to learn my first, and most essential, lesson on TV news. That things will go wrong, particularly when you are live, and you are entirely on your own then, nobody to hold your hand, edit your copy, rewrite, even erase a really bad mistake. You have to think on your feet. Or, act like the proverbial tubelight. Blink, glow, stutter, glow. Which is how I responded to my first crisis, live. Remember, this was 1988 technology, there was no talk-back in my ear, no production control live with the OB van in Allahabad. On that night as the burning heat wave still swept the plains, I stood holding a mike with the OB behind me, staring at a tiny black-and-white TV placed on a stool in front. Auto-cue, I was told, had failed. So I had to keep my eyes on the TV, which showed live coverage, and start speaking the moment my figure appeared on the screen. Now you know what I mean by tubelight effect?

The next couple of P2Cs came in equally testing situations even if they were not live. There was the odd call to substitute whenever Raghav Bahl, then Madhu Trehans video newsmagazine Newstracks co-anchor, missed a day. Madhu struggled to fix my hopelessly desi, non-convent accent and delivery but continued to be optimistic. So optimistic, in fact, that she sent a stellar crewAjmal Jami and Bharat Rajwith me to Afghanistan in 1993 as the Najibullah regime entered the end-game in the first Afghan jihad. All of Afghanistan was under snow, sub-zero, and TV equipment those days weighed 120 kg, which the three of us had to haul. The fourth, photographer Prashant Panjiar, had his own stuff to carry. And the fifth, Rashid, the official minder and interpreter, always turned up in jacket and tie and would share no such burdens. We were all much younger but continued searching for a porter. None was to be found. Probably anybody half-way fit or young had been conscripted by one side or the other, or was fighting as a mercenary. At one point we thought we did find a murga. As we started trudging, with all the equipment, the expanse of the Mazar-i-Sharif airbase, where we had just been brought by an Afghan plane, we saw a young, fit and idling Afghan in tattered khaki overalls. Eyes lit up, I pulled out a fistful of Afghanis (local currency) which, I think, were then 700 to a dollar, and grandly offered them to him if he would give us a hand with the load. He smiled, in pride as well as pity (on us), patted the Afghan Air Force wings on the left breast of his ragged overall, and said, Me peelaut, sorry. The one we thought a likely porter turned out to be a joyful MiG-27 pilot and he regaled us with stories of rocket and front-gun raids on the Mujahideen, dodging Stinger missiles. But we carried the equipment. It wasnt a bad half-hour story by the standards of those days, particularly as no Indian cameras had gone to Afghanistan yet. But Id rather that you did not find it in any archive today. It would look awful, particularly with most of my pieces to camera delivered through teeth crackling with cold.

It was no surprise then that when I returned to Prannoy and Radhika Roy to ask if I could do something on TVby this time NDTV was running Star Newsthey said, Look, we do not think you are ready for TV yet. So what do I do to get ready? I asked. Nothing, Prannoy said, we will know when you are ready and let you know. Much as I would have preferred to forget that evening in their Greater Kailash apartment, I really cant. And for very good reason. I had reached a little bit ahead of my hosts and had Logo and Graphic, the friendliest dogs ever, for company. The dining table was set with six napkins, as probably dinner guests were expected after I left. Then the Roys arrived and the hounds ran straight to the dining table, stealing one napkin after the other and piling them neatly at their feet. The meticulously set dining table had been devastated. See, which dog lover will not cherish such a brilliant dog-moment, even if it was on an evening when you were told you were not good enough for something you wanted to do.

Prannoy called a couple of years later, and I later figured out why he then thought I was ready for TV. Just a few months earlier I had started writing my weekly column, National Interest, and he thought I had now become sufficiently serious to hold forth once a week on a new show called Nationwide, where the anchor read the news and asked a pundit to pronounce judgement on each one. It was sort of formal, I was told, and so I bought a bunch of new ties. I didnt have any and learnt, from a DIY pamphlet, to tie the single knot. But I felt suffocated and distracted, and the camera misses nothing. So I got a rare, and short, sermon from Prannoy. Remember, he said, You may be feeling awful about something, you may be sick, uncomfortable, irritated by the anchors questionsthe viewer does not know or care. So do not display any of this on your face. Never.