TARUN TEJPAL – Look Back In Anger

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Look Back In Anger
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Tarun Tejpal - ON A BALMY evening at the end of
September 2001 I was in the hall of a luxurious
hotel in south Mumbai attending a media awards
ceremony. The company I represented a tiny
website with a working life of less than a year
was creating ripples in the packed room. By the
time the evening was over, of the fourteen awards
up for the having, the website would have pulled
in six. These would include the Media Brand of
the Year (ahead of MTV and Star Plus, which would
grab second place) Content Head of the Year
Investigative Story of the Year (for unearthing
the goof-ups of Kargil) and Entertainment Story
of the Year. The story for which the website was
now universally famous was not even in the
reckoning. These were awards for the year 2000
the big story belonged to March, 2001.
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While we were being feted with a string of media
awards, a sinister drama connected to us was
being played out in the international airport at
Chennai. A superbly successful young couple,
schooled and bred in small-town India, entirely
selfmade, was suddenly made to feel the iron grip
of the Indian state closing around its throat.
While I collected the accolades and proceeded to
drink and eat, the young couple were surrounded
by a swarm of hostile officials and kept from
boarding their flight. While I slept, under
police protection, the couple was interrogated
deep into the night. Their stated, and
understated, crime to have invested in an
internet company with a website called
tehelka.com. The people who paid the heaviest
price for Operation West End, the expose on
corruption in arms procurements, were not the
politicians, bureaucrats, army officers, and
middlemen who were indicted, nor was it the
journalists who had done and run with the story.
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The two people whose lives were trashed on
account of the expose, with which they had
absolutely nothing to do, were Shankar Sharma and
Devina Mehra, husband and wife, owners of a
premier brokerage company called First Global.
Their story is a chilling illustration of how
easily the India that we imagine is a benign
liberal democracy can segue into an Orwellian
nightmare of government apparatchiks operating
outside all rules of law and propriety. My first
memory of Shankar is of a college cricket field.
Of a tall, well-built boy in all-white, pounding
in repeatedly from a long run-up to bowl left-arm
outswingers, under the watchful eye of Yograj
Singh, current sensation Yuvraj Singhs father.
He was a friend of my younger brothers in
college, one of hundreds of students from Bihar
whod come to Chandigarh to pick up a degree. The
year probably was 1981.
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I remember him as low-key, but not inconspicuous.
Apart from the cricket, the rumour that
distinguished him was that he was already, as a
teenager, trading in the stockmarket. It was not
something most of us understood then, or do so
now. My next memory of Shankar has him holding a
satchel as we run into each other late one
evening in the wide commercial plaza of Sector 17
in Chandigarh. We are working men now. I am
reporting the Punjab agitation for a daily
newspaper, and he is marketing computers. We talk
a bit, neither understanding the other. I am
carrying The Onion Eaters by JP Donleavy, and he
takes it from my hand and examines it. He asks,
and I try and tell him what its about. Hes
amused, I think to be done with college and to
be still stuck with novels. I ask about the
satchel, and he says the sales job is temporary.
He has other, bigger, plans for himself.
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Through the next decade I only hear the
occasional snatch about him from my brother. Hes
joined Citibank, hes left Citibank, hes
married, he lives in South Mumbai, hes
successful on the stockmarket. My brother, who
knows less about the metabolism of money than
most, thinks hes wildly successful, but says
theres no evidence to proclaim it. Shankar still
lives cheap, eats cheap, dresses cheap. His
cigars are Indian, off the paanwallah when he
offers you food it comes off the street. But the
embrace is warm the laugh loud and full. In
February 2000, I quit as the managing editor of
Outlook, and four of us decide to set up a
journalistic website. It is the height of the
dotcom boom, and there is venture funding being
tossed around to anyone with some credentials and
an idea. Suhel Seth, Aniruddha Bahal, Minty
Tejpal and I travel to Mumbai to meet with Ashok
Wadhwa of Ambit to make a pitch. In a swish
conference room we wait for the money man. He
arrives, full of bustle. On the white board Ashok
and Suhel run through an argumentative routine.
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Soon the valuation of the proposed website is set
at 8 million. The name agreed upon is
tehelka.com (one of several already registered by
Aniruddha). Wadhwa asks for a week to find the
first tranche of investment, and asks for five
percent of the company as his fee for doing
so. THE FOUR of us now repair to the Taj
President (where Suhel is staying), and in its
restaurant, on a paper napkin, the stakes of the
proposed company are divvied up. The deed done,
Suhel leaves and Minty suggests we visit Shankar,
who lives next door, and bounce the entire deal
off him. We know no one else we can readily
consult. Shankar and Devina are cooking tasteless
rajmachawal for lunch, which we eat too. The flat
is modest, displaying no excess of taste or
money. We talk cricket, cinema, and get an okay
on what we cobbled together in the morning.
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A week later, on a Sunday, Shankar calls me in
Delhi and drops home for lunch. As I drive him to
the airport in the evening, he makes an offer to
fund our website on the same terms as offered by
Wadhwa. I promise to get back to him. For the
next week, treading water, waiting to start work
on the website, I pursue Wadhwa. Finally I meet
him at the Taj Mansingh in Delhi right after hes
delivered his budget analysis speech. He says
hell get back in a day or so. Nothing happens.
We consult among ourselves and decide to accept
Shankars offer. They take a small 14.50 percent
stake in our company. Shankar and Devina prove
exceptional in every way. Their investment comes
in timely tranches they never interfere the
website gets going we break the cricket
matchfixing story, and dozens of others the best
writers and columnists write for us the hunt for
the next round of investors takes Shankar and me
through dozens of meetings. On February 16 we
shake hands with Subhash Chandra of Zee for a 26
percent stake.
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On March 13 we break Operation West End. That
morning I call Shankar to tell him we are
breaking a big story that may rock the
government. He pleads with me not to do it. He
fears the investment deal may flounder. By then,
as journalists, we are in a place beyond business
calculations. The story is broken, and within
days the assault on all our lives and work
begins. We are shamelessly targeted but we are
also feted. No such luck for Shankar and Devina.
Their life of impeccable professionalism and
continuous endeavour is battered in a way that
can be barely imagined. From being the very best
of their generation they are reduced to
fugitives. In desperation, we see them grasp for
lawyers and godmen. The lessons for them are
cruel, unfair, and too many. They realise beneath
the veneer of a just democracy we are still only
a feudal-colonial apparatus. The beast of power
rages without a conscience.
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The violence of what is done to them is amplified
by their utter innocence. They are not political
animals looking for traction not journalists
doing their job not idealists chasing a cause.
And yet, once the onslaught comes they become
splendid. They dig deep into their inner
resources, and fight back as warriors of
righteousness. Read every word of the following
pages to understand the dangerous chameleon the
Indian state is. Read every word to also
understand courage as Ernest Hemingway described
it grace under pressure. For all the havoc
TEHELKA wreaked into their lives, Shankar and
Devina did not once turn on us. Its
extraordinary. Not one harsh word. They ceased to
be stakeholders in TEHELKA long ago, but even
today, all the work weve done since, owes them a
debt.
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It's Written by Tarun J Tejpal. Tarun Tejpal says
sorrow must not be cultivated it is a poor
lifestyle choice. Tarun Tejpal is a journalist,
publisher, and novelist. In a 26-year career,
Tarun Tejpal has been an editor with the India
Today and the Indian Express groups, and the
managing editor of Outlook, Indias premier
newsmagazine. In March 2000, he started Tehelka,
a news organisation that has earned a global
reputation for its aggressive public interest
journalism. Also you can check Tarun J Tejpal.