CHAMPION OF THE UNDERDOG

Courage and Moral Fibre

By V Ramnarayan

He is perhaps one of the last defenders of communism outside party manifestos, for rarely has such a staunch champion of the underprivileged been seen for over five decades, much more so perhaps than some of the leading lights in left wing politics. He is a beacon of searing intensity for the rest of us to follow at a time when worldwide events with their ugliness and depravity tend to remind us of the ideals that once burned bright within us before we decided to grow up.  

Raised in a distinctly upper middle class family if not exactly in the lap of luxury, and a product of the elite Scindia School of Gwalior, my cousin Paddu turned his back on a life of comfort in his twenties, if not earlier, though I have never asked him about his moment of epiphany if any. Was it around the time he discontinued studying for his MBBS at the Christian Medical College, Vellore? He entered the world of journalism a few years hence, meanwhile acquiring a bachelor’s degree in journalism by correspondence.

Starting his career at Indian Express, Bombay, Paddu set the benchmark very high for himself in the rigour of his research and his quest for honesty and accuracy. His innate concern for the underdog and compassion for minorities grew even as he worked at perfecting his craft, at achieving the mot juste in his despatches.

“If you’re not a communist at the age of 20, you haven’t got a heart. If you’re still a communist at the age of 30, you haven’t got a brain,” went a famous misquote of the 20^th century. In today’s topsy-turvy global scenario, it may be time to coin a new aphorism which will say, “If you were not a communist at 20, at least redeem yourself by embracing the ideals of equality and social justice before you are seventy.” Paddu is 79 now, and his heart beats stronger than ever for the weak and dispossessed. He retired long ago as a career journalist, but judging by his social media posts, still has enough fire and the power of words in him to make a difference should he choose to write seriously again. 

 I must digress slightly here to speak of my cousins at large. I had 42 first cousins at last count—in the 1960s; I haven’t kept track since then! Quite a few of them are part of the strong support system I have been blessed with, in addition to my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and if I ever write my autobiography, I will have to devote pages to each of them, but Paddu is the one living cousin I choose to write on now because he came into my life at a critical moment and exerted a huge influence on me, himself probably oblivious to the effect he had on my choices. Of one thing I am sure: Paddu must take the major blame for the way I have turned out, though it was two other cousins Babu and Balu who persuaded me to try my hand at writing.

My parents and their six children were living at Abhiramapuram close to the TUCS outlet on Moubrays (now TTK) Road from 1964 t0 ’67. Paddu came to live with us sometime in ’65, I think, and stayed on for about a year.  I was the oldest at 18 then, in my second year at Presidency College, and the youngest my sister Papu, all of seven years old. Nagan had just joined IIT Madras, Sarada SIET College, Krishnan went to Vidya Mandir, Viji to Adarsh Vidyalaya and Papu to nearby Bon Secours Convent School.

It must have been a challenging time in Paddu’s life following his momentous career decision, but he was quite the hero of the young brood at home, while Appa and Amma showered their affection on him. Appa was some twenty years older than Paddu, but the two got on like a house on fire, constantly pulling each other’s leg.  Paddu was a fitness freak, with rippling muscles to show for it. He was at various stages a follower of different schools of training, from Muller’s My System through Bullworker to yoga learnt from a booklet brought out by Ramtirth Yogashram of Brahmi Oil fame. I was already playing collegiate cricket, and did not need much persuasion to try out these systems. I found yoga in particular very useful.

A prominent feature of Paddu’s daily routine was the length of time each activity occupied. The nine residents had to share one bathroom and one toilet, and Paddu’s shower lasted at least as long as one elaborate raga alapana—Hindustani or Carnatic—and a few songs. He had a strong voice which has in recent years been weakened somewhat by health issues, but back then could crack an oyster at sixty paces, besides adhering perfectly to sruti. You can gauge the impact of that voice from a recent experience of mine. An old schoolmate I was meeting after fifty years, recalled listening to Paddu’s rendition of  the Mukesh number Matwali naar thumak thumak chali jaye, while visiting us in 1965. He does not know Paddu personally, but his voice he still remembers!

The song sessions and Paddu’s yoga practice were not without amusing sidelights, though my father was sometimes not so amused. My cousin lay sprawled on the floor of the master bedroom in glorious savasana after his exertions, eyes closed in oblivion to the external world, with my father skirting around him gingerly to avoid tripping, at the same time desperately searching for shirt, trousers, tie, socks and briefcase, all the while making entirely futile clicking noises that failed to alert Paddu to Appa’s morning emergencies. Sometimes, the routine changed slightly with Appa waiting impatiently for Madhuban mein Radhika nachere to be completed so that he could go in to shower.   But these irritations were confined to the morning when Appa was getting ready to go to work. In the evening, he was back to his normal genial self, and uncle and nephew had a gala time teasing each other.

Paddu was preparing for his BA exams, or ostensibly so anyway, and yet unemployed, used to receive a monthly money order from his parents. The immediate aftermath of the event was a visit to the street corner cigarette shop to settle his monthly account. All the ‘jobless’ boys including sundry cousins and neighbours would go trooping out with him on this important mission followed by a minitreat of snacks and tea or soft drinks. The major treat would be a movie or two at Safire or Anand, leaving Paddu close to broke again within a week. We probably watched My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music during this period, but it was Lawrence of Arabia that tested the genuineness of my hero worship of Paddu the most. I formed much of my reading habit based on Paddu’s preferences, and that included the complete plays and prefaces of George Bernard Shaw and other authors like W Somerset Maugham, Terence Rattigan and AJ Cronin, to name a few. I enjoyed all these brilliant authors, but reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence, the hero of Lawrence of Arabia, was the limit. It was after John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, a prescribed college text, the most punishing tome I had come across, and I gamely tried to plough through it for the simple reason that my cousin was in the throes of a Lawrence obsession. Our excursions to cinema theatres and the British Council library were undoubtedly the highlights of that Indian summer of our lives.

Our house was a popular meeting place for a small battalion of cousins. Weekends and holidays were filled with indoor games during the day and cricket on the rooftop in the evenings. Paddu was an enthusiastic participant in these games despite his elder statesman status in the group. Clad in baggy trousers rolled up to ankle height and banian or short sleeved shirt –again sleeves folded up stylishly—he was a picture of concentration while he aimed to impart vicious underarm spin on the tennis ball, his face suitably contorted and his grunts an impressive foretaste of the future Ms Monica Seles, to put fear in the batsman’s mind. Every time the ball went over the terrace wall, one of us charged downstairs to retrieve it from our compound or the neighbour’s, vaulting over the fence with the agility of an Olympic hurdler. Poor Appa must have spent a minor fortune on fence repairs, and Amma and the maidservant worked themselves to the bone cleaning up after us. After the day’s physical exertions, Paddu would buy enormous quantities of peanuts from the street vendor to go round our binge-eating mob, to the accompaniment of much singing of songs by almost all concerned. Appa and Amma joined in all the merriment, with Amma singing some kritis in her ringing voice.

Of course, the idyll had to end. The day came when Paddu had to take his BA exam and return to Bombay where he joined Indian Express. I am not very sure of my facts here, but I think he was with Express still when I went to Bombay to play a Ranji Trophy quarterfinal match in early 1976.  At this distance of time, I find it hard to believe that the morning  after we reached Bombay travelling by train, I went all the way from Wankhede Stadium to Mulund where Paddu took me by suburban train to his brother Raja’s house. When I returned just in time for net practice in the afternoon, my skipper ML Jaisimha was very annoyed with me and gave me an earful for my foolish exertions the day before the match. I think I redeemed myself by bowling my team into a strong position at the end of the first day’s play, but we contrived to lose the match after gaining a decent first innings lead. I had played at the Brabourne Stadium as a 17-year old, and this was my first appearance at Wankhede. It was exciting to play there watched by many great cricketers past and present, before a sizeable crowd. Paddu’s was a comforting presence. We spent the evenings together either in my room or going for a walk enjoying the cool seabreeze. Unfortunately, I blotted my copybook and Paddu’s trousers somewhat, vomiting all over him as a result of strong medication for a tummy upset and dehydration bowling 35 overs on the trot in humid conditions. While Paddu showed great patience in cleaning the mess, my roommate Prahlad was convinced I had been drinking!

The next time I met Paddu was in Calcutta the same year, when I went to play my last match for SBI Hyderabad vs. SBI Calcutta. He had joined the Economic Times there, and was staying at the YMCA. For my team, our stay at Broadway Hotel, a modest, clean lodge, was an unusual experience. My roommate D Govindraj was a fast bowler with a beautiful action. I watched open-mouthed as he set about rearranging the furniture in our room just as wicket keeper P Krishnamurti had predicted. That, however, was not the highlight of our stay there, but being refused entry to the hotel at 10 pm by an overzealous security guard who believed good boys should not stay out late!

The match was on paper an even contest between two strong teams, but we lost it in the very first session of play, when Subroto Guha showed us with his superlative swing bowling why he was regarded as one of the best of his kind. We were bundled out for about 120, with Guha claiming eight wickets, and though we tried to make a fight of it mainly through excellent pace bowling by VS Patel with some help from me, we lost the match. Once again, it was a case of some personal success for me with ten wickets in the two innings, but to no avail for the team. The evenings were enjoyably spent in the company of my teammates and Paddu.

Little did any of us in the family know of what lay in store for Paddu. In addition to his duties as a subeditor at ET Calcutta, Paddu was also the secretary of the workers’ union, named by an elected executive committee of 15 members. Being the upright person he is, he took the responsibility seriously and this meant that he might sooner or later run afoul of the management. He stood his ground in the face of pressure from the editor on a news item on which they did not see eye to eye, Paddu refusing to toe the line purely on the basis of the correctness of his stand and as he was well within his rights to decide on the issue.

This act of defiance was enough to earn Paddu the wrath of the management and lead to his eventual dismissal from service on the grounds of insubordination. The union protested, joining the all India unions of the TOI group on a strike that lasted two months, with the strike by the Calcutta unit going on for five months in all.

Though Paddu had been dismissed, he continued to be an office bearer of the union, and with the management dragging a domestic inquiry endlessly, and appealing to the high court after a labour tribunal ordered Paddu’s reinstatement, he stayed on in Calcutta for eleven long years doing freelance writing, what he describes as “off the record employment as a subeditor,” and with help from friends.  Anyone who has been there and done that will know what a tough struggle that must have been. Paddu stuck it out because he “was bound by union discipline” as the union was fighting his case.   

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to this story. The time came when some friends persuaded Paddu to look for a more stable arrangement for his livelihood. As the union president too advised him to look for a job, Paddu relented, and sent in a letter to The Hindu, seeking a freelance column opportunity. His record as a trade unionist must have impressed the editor N Ram—who once led a strike in the newspaper whose editor his father was—as much as his journalistic credentials. Paddu was offered full time appointment as a Special Correspondent of the group’s magazine Frontline and posted in Bombay. Thus began the most successful phase of his career, during which period he did some brilliant  reporting with his rigorous research ensuring the credibility of his stories. Though much of Frontline’s coverage was political, Paddu also got to interview personalities from fields like sport and the arts. I vividly remember his pieces on Medha Patkar, Prof. DB Deodhar and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, for instance.   

At Frontline, too, Paddu never stopped taking a principled stand on issues he felt strongly about. His family and friends continue to admire him. I was deeply influenced by him growing up, and I am grateful for that, even if our lives have followed different trajectories.

(Concluded).