Memoirs from the fourth estate

Sunday MiD DAY leafs through B G Verghese's memoirs, First Draft

Eminent journalist B G Verghese recounts his journey that spans six decades, in First Draft. Independence, infant India and the new millennium make this 500-odd paged tome a must read. And who better than a journalist to tell the story of modern India? Excerpts:



Pg 36
Then there is the indelible memory of Republic Day, 1950. From late evening onwards on 25 January, people started gathering at well-known landmarks -- Flora Fountain, the Gateway of India, the Regal, Churchgate, Marine Drive, Chowpatty, Shivaji Park and so on -- throughout the city. Buildings were illuminated and streets festooned. The suburban trains were choked, with people standing dangerously on footboards and couplings and perched on the roofs of mainline, steam-driven trains.

I set out for the Gateway with friends. By eleven o'clock, it was difficult to move, so dense was the throng. The harbour was ablaze with light with every ship, tug, barge and buoy lit up. As midnight tolled, ships, locomotives and factories sounded their sirens, building residents crowding balconies, windows and rooftops beat thalis and gongs in thunderous celebration, to the singing of 'Jana gana mana' and cries of Jai Hind.
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A naval salvo saluted the Republic. It was a deeply emotional and magical moment of pride, hope, joy and utter abandon as an entire city, indeed an entire nation, greeted the promise of the new Constitution. Stranger embraced stranger. The festivities stretched into the early hours.u00a0u00a0

Pg 290-91
In Delhi, Mrs Gandhi suffered a deep personal loss with Sanjay Gandhi's tragic death, in 1980, in an air crash that should never have happened. He was piloting a Pitts Special, a bi-plane most often used for aerobatics and stunt flying. He had lived dangerously in defiance of any rule book, had streaked across the political firmament and crashed like a meteor. Mrs Gandhi was shattered. On whom could she lean, surrounded as she was by servitors?

It was her more sedate and shy elder son, Rajiv, who gave up commercial flying to join his mother. I wrote to Mrs Gandhi, a mother, to commiserate the loss of a son. In due course I received a formal response. She recalled Sanjay's zestful energy.u00a0u00a0

First Draft by B G Verghese, published by Tranquebar, Rs 695