The Twenty-First Floor and Some Pure Dreams
The management never harboured any illusions about Nirdosh. But he was useful where Madhavkant could never be. Instead of moving up, the circulation graph of the magazine was on the way down. Nirdosh brazenly tried out all the standard tricks of popular journalism but the magazine attracted no ads nor added to its circulation. The Prarambh readers were cerebral beings with a wide readership. But the managers tended to go by their own outlandish theories. At one meeting, a bizarre theory was propounded that whenever a funeral procession passed by, it was to be assumed that one magazine reader was gone. The conclusion? That the magazine was totally incapable of inspiring, influencing or drawing to its fold the new generation.
If Nirdosh still managed to cling on to his chair for five years, it was because he could manage to sort out the company’s minor troubles thanks to his contacts among ministers or other influential quarters. He offered other services as well. An ancient senior manager in the company harboured an illusion of being something of a Lothario. Viagra hadn’t come into the market yet, but the grapevine had it that Nirdosh would personally fetch potency improving potions for him from a well-known hakim in Daryaganj.
After his long leave was over, Madhavkant left for Japan as a visiting professor at some university there. Mahesh Uniyal had a good network in Japan and Madhavkant was among his favourite disciples. The sincerity with which Uniyal looked after his talented rearguard and promoted their interests was a tradition which his followers somehow never followed. That could be interpreted as the generational gap.
Many among the Prarambh readers of the 1970s had by now become IAS officers and held senior positions. At a party one day, I ran into one such officer who even remembered the title of one of my articles published a decade earlier. ‘I am astonished how a person of your calibre is able to work under that third-rate podium poet,’ he told me.
‘We work under him but not in underwear,’ I said, my voice conveying both my disillusionment and bitterness. Another senior IAS officer once told me he felt jealous of journalists like us. ‘It’s so easy for you to have a meeting with public figures like Satyajit Ray whereas we are doomed to suck up to the third-rate leaders of this country.’
Nirdosh, on his part, served the company well but companies have their own inscrutable ways of calculating their profit and loss. He had come to occupy the editor’s chair with a certain degree of grandeur, and was given certain powers and assurances, but once he was shown the door, there was not even a whisper of remorse from any quarter.
Soon, Prabodh Kumar, who fancied jeans, displayed Che Guevara’s posters in his house like some coveted medallions, and was proficient in both English and French (he hardly knew Hindi) miraculously materialized as the editor in his place. On his first day in the chair – which had, at one time, been occupied by gifted writers like Uniyal and Madhavkant – Prabodh Kumar sagely advised the editorial team to write in good and simple Hindi, i.e., use dollops of English expressions.
Some nosey colleagues finally managed to unravel how that divine genius, ignorant about even the rudiments of Hindi, had ended up in Prarambh. We were told that he was the boyfriend of some young girl in Mithilesh’s family, and had been hired on the principle that to attract young readers to Prarambh, all one needed to have was a young editor with minimum knowledge of Hindi and not a Hindi scholar. The idea was to establish a dialogue with the new generation.
‘Sanjayji, how much time would you give to this kid? Ten months or two years?’ I posed the conundrum as a form of banter.
‘What are you saying, Sudhir? In two years, we’ll be nowhere. Ten months are more than enough.’
‘It all depends on how long he remains the company’s boyfriend,’ I said.
Prabodh Kumar tried to improve our language for some eighteen months and, in the process, nearly lost his grasp of the English language. Finally, one day, he put in his papers and proceeded for further studies at Sorbonne University.
But we at Prarambh were doomed to witness even further decline of the magazine. The new editor Ravindra Kumar Singh patently looked like a knave. The grapevine was that if any of the girls on the staff was with him in his cabin, he would keep the first shirt button open and his frail fingers would fidget around the gap.
He had been the circulation manager of an English magazine but also composed Hindi songs and couplets on the side. He had lost his previous job when a girl filed a written complaint against his objectionable behaviour. An investigation by the company declared him innocent but he was sacked all the same. He had a mistress by the name of Shruti Pandey and it was claimed that whichever company Ravindra Kumar Singh joined, Shruti’s appointment followed, as an essential part of the dowry. In her previous job, in the middle of a showdown in the office, Shruti had threatened an old staffer in no uncertain terms, ‘If I keep the boss’s bed warm, I am entitled to certain privileges too.’
On the very day that Ravindra Kumar Singh took over, I made the silent resolve that the time had come to quit Prarambh after tweny years of service. No more humiliations.
‘Where would you go? And what would you do?’ asked Sanjay Srivastava. He was also quitting but had found the editor’s position in a small and sanitized magazine issued by a cultural institution.
‘I’ve heard that in Kerala, some eminent poets show no scruples hawking fish to make a living. I’d set up a stall of Amritsari kulchas right opposite the Kakkar & Co.’s offices.’
That night, I took a number of crucial decisions. The main resolve was that under no circumstances would I continue with Prarambh. After many years, I decided to go and see Madhavkant. Once he returned from Japan, he’d been freelancing. He threw this morsel at me in his typically sarcastic style. ‘In Uniyalji’s time, Prarambh’s slogan was “Magazine that enlightens the mind”. Now its slogan ought to be “Magazine that lightens the mind”.’
Samaychetna also had a new editor now – Yuddhvir Singh. I ran into him in the toilet one day, when he asked, ‘Why are you working under that scoundrel Ravindra Kumar Singh? Why don’t you cross over to me? We have some new plans.’
From its start, I had looked upon Samaychetna as a third-rate masala magazine. But after twenty years at one company, I gladly acquiesced to work for the very same rag – as the features editor of its entertainment section. I decided that for at least three years, I’d try to function as an efficient component of the run-of-the-mill journalism. If it didn’t work out, I’d sell chhole-bhature or kulchas with pride. I then left my permanent job or clerkship and went over to a three-year contract with a better salary, and also managed to extract from Yuddhvir Singh the blank cheque to work with complete freedom.
‘I won’t disturb you at all. No interference. Your entertainment section would come out as a separate small magazine, a kind of free packet of sweets with the main issue. But please don’t create a storm or any kind of turbulence. I need to show results to the management. The age of intellectual journalism or committed journalism, as you call it, is long over. There’s no room for that, at least not in this company.’
As I went back to Prarambh to clear out my desk, I discovered the famous – or shall I say the notorious – Shruti Pande warming my seat. She quite endearingly wished me ‘good luck’ and even suggested I run a cover story in the entertainment section on the changing man–woman relationships. Before I met her, I had imagined her to be a sexy wench. But now that I saw her, I found she was quite an ordinary Hindi journalist. Of course, some women chose to go to the toilet for a smoke but I found her indulging herself out in the open.
When I went to see Ravindra Kumar Singh in his cabin, he said, ‘You have taken the decision rather hastily. I was toying with the idea of making you the chief subeditor.’
‘Ravindraji, change was very essential for me. My journalistic tools were getting rusty. I’d like to work for three or four years in a new fashion. Otherwise, I’d quit journalism.’
‘You see, it’s not easy to quit journalism. In any case, where would you go after Kakkar & Co.?’
‘Well, I’d go to Haridwar or Rishikesh.’
Ravindra Kumar laughed loudly. Just then, a kittenish typist walked in and his fingers immediately began to hover around his shirt’s open buttons in the manner he had mastered. I stood there with folded hands to bid goodbye to Prarambh and left.
I now had a cabin of my own and even put together an envious collection of glamorous posters and, on day one, spent a lot of time with Yadav, the office peon, putting these up in my cabin. The room was gleaming when Snehlata cagily opened the cabin door, ‘May I come in, sir?’
To this day, I find it difficult to deny just how stunned I was by her looks. French film-maker Francois Truffaut once said there were two kinds of heroines. The ones you felt like caressing and the ones you wished only to contemplate. Snehlata belonged to the second category.
I discovered that she was one of the two women on my staff. She was already engaged and her husband-to-be was trying to settle in London for the last four years; she was a bride-in-waiting, her future husband was a CA. She came from a middle-class family and was a Hindi journalist. Her soon to be in-laws had given her a chauffeur-driven car.
‘Sir, your cabin really looks very modern. Generally, Hindiwallahs are quite conservative. It’ll be fun working with you. I can’t stand those Hindiwallahs with medieval ideas.’
‘Madam, you too better become a little modern. Forget this sir business. My name is Sudhir. Even Sudhirji will do.’
‘And I’m Snehlata. So you too don’t address me as madam, please.’
That evening, I told Sudha that a stunningly attractive siren had joined my staff. ‘One craves to go on looking at her, without touching her.’
‘And why do you want to look at her? Do you go to the office to work or to stare at and caress people? You better say goodbye to these habits of your youth. Do something. Your daughter is growing up.’ Sudha had never made such acidic comments before.
I had, however, advised Snehlata that being a bride-in-waiting, she might find it difficult to work with me. What I needed were colleagues who would work hard, stay back in the office for long hours, and work fast on computers, since they had just been introduced in Hindi publications. I hardly knew how to handle a mouse but then, I was the boss and was not supposed to type out anything.
My other colleague Shalini handled the computer very fast. She was quite a bossy character, though, who had married a software engineer two years ago. Both Shalini and Snehlata were twenty-eight and detested each other from the core of their hearts.
I had this feeling that if Snehlata remained on the staff, while she might give me memorable moments of personal satisfaction, pride and dignity, it would not be easy for me to make her actually work. For example, I’d never be able to scold her.
Initially, I had this feeling that Shalini might not pose problems for me. On one occasion, she sat across from me and in no time typed out a long feature. When I asked her to bring some photos from the library, she managed to seek out a whole lot of them. She also brought along a clippings file. ‘Sir, have a look at this as well. I can see a lot of relevant material in it.’ I didn’t object to the ‘sir’.
The moment Shalini left, Snehlata came into the cabin and pulled up a chair. ‘So, you’ve finally come to like the fatty. I never knew you have such poor taste. I may not be all that fast on the computer but I do work efficiently.’
‘Why do you feel rejected? I was looking at your convenience. It’s my luck that a Tripur Sundari like you is working with me.’
‘And what’s this Tripur Sundari business? I don’t follow this language. But I must warn you that you should steer clear of that fat buffalo.’
‘And she was telling me to steer clear of the sexy wench. But there’s a saying that beauty has its own predators…’
Shalini had said nothing of the sort but I added that in a moment of mischief.
When I came out of the office that evening, I noticed Snehlata opening the door to her chauffeur-driven car. And I, her resourceless boss, was headed to join the crowd waiting for bus no. 520. I stopped near a cane juice stall to let her pass. But she had the car stopped and asked, ‘Sudhirji, shall I drop you anywhere?’
‘I have to go close by, to Barakhamba Road. I have no problem walking there.’
‘Why are you being so formal? I’ll drop you there.’
I was actually to go to the refugee colony of Malaviya Nagar but ended up on my magical twenty-first floor. The twenty-first floor of the Hans Plaza building on Barakhamba Road had one of my favourite restaurants which offered a clear view of Delhi.
‘Snehlataji, if you give me the lift, it’ll turn out to be quite an expensive proposition for you. Now you’d have to have coffee with me at my favourite restaurant.’
She couldn’t say no even though that evening, her future father-in-law Ramesh Jaitley was to visit her house.
‘Sure. I don’t think it should take more than ten minutes to have a cup of coffee,’ she said.
The world tended to transform itself when viewed from the eyrie of the twenty-first. If you possessed even an iota of sensitivity, you would find Delhi and its landscape, as seen through the large glass panes, to be quite a different world altogether. The traffic seemed to merely crawl and it was all noiseless. And the gradual transition from twilight to darkness was an amazing experience.
Even Snehlata was surprised. Ten minutes extended to two hours. We spoke a lot, ruminating about so many dreams and realities, eventually turning into an unforgettable experience. It wasn’t really a romantic evening. Rather a very pure evening, as if one had emerged from a bath taken out of a pitcher overflowing with nectar.
It had been decided that at exactly 11 every morning, there’d be a half-hour meeting where we’d have an open discussion on the day’s work and plans for the future. The following day, Shalini was in my cabin on the dot but Snehlata arrived fifteen minutes late. She was out of breath as she opened the door. ‘Sorry, I was stuck in the traffic. I had to push my driver to speed up so I could be here on time. Please don’t be such a stickler about the meeting time. I only hope there’s no accident one day.’
Shalini smiled weakly. I said nothing.
The next ten months were a success. The entertainment magazine Rasrang impressed the circulation department highly. Yuddhvir Singh was elated and every time I’d run into brand manager Jagpal Singh he’d say, ‘You’re working wonders, sir. At home, there are catfights about who should read the magazine first.’
On one occasion, we had planned to carry, on the Rasrang cover, the pictures of twenty-one of the most popular heroines in sexy poses. Brand manager Jagpal heartily approved of the first thirteen pics. The fourteenth showed Rekha, when he chose to remain silent. The fifteenth was Shabana Azmi’s. It was quite a glamorous pic.
Yuddhvir phoned in early next morning. ‘Jagpal is very upset. He says that in view of some of the ageing heroines on the cover, the magazine readers were likely to make a beeline for the cremation ground. What has happened to you all of a sudden?’
‘He is a stupid brand manager. How many times have we to repeat the sexy poses of Mamta Kulkarni or Manisha Koirala? The last time I saw him in the lift, he was asking me to make the pictures hotter.’
‘Well, you have a blank cheque from me. But this brand manager has a habit of phoning me up every morning to pull me up.’
With the intent of taking some sort of revenge, for our next cover I chose a very sexy picture of American model Cindy Crawford. Yuddhvir would generally give a once-over to every cover. Only then was the magazine considered okay. I would sign off the cover as ‘Okay’. He’d only throw a glance at it and say, ‘Okay’.
It was Shalini who went up to him this time with the cover design. After signing off the cover, I handed it to her to show it to Yuddhvir. She gave me a naughty smile, ‘Editor saheb will be swooning today. You’ve selected a rattlingly sexy pic.’
Yuddhvir was busy in a meeting. He almost didn’t see the cover and simply said, ‘Looks okay, send it.’ And almost like a miracle, the revolutionary cover of Rasrang got printed.
Next morning, Yuddhvir called up very early. ‘You seem to have crossed all limits of obscenity. I had to hide the magazine from my young daughter.’
‘Please talk to me after you’ve got the brand manager’s phone call. Right now, I’m in the middle of my shave.’
The brand manager congratulated Yuddhvir and as a result, this problem of having to hide the magazine from his daughter got sorted out. Shalini reported to me that the entire office was in an uproar over the cover picture. ‘Editor saheb called me over and told me that next time, no matter how busy he was in a meeting, the cover must be shown to him properly.’
Shalini also had a habit of prying. She’d come and tell me all the bits of news she may have gleaned in the office. Snehlata, on the contrary, paid no attention to the grapevine. But whenever I started to talk to her, I had this desire to go on talking for hours on end. Her persona had a sort of indefinable purity.
‘Tongues are wagging as to why Snehlata continues to occupy your cabin for so many hours. Of course, you know the conservative mindset of nosey Hindi journalists…’
‘Shaliniji, you too are welcome to sit in my cabin for hours. The outsiders will feel even more jealous.’ For some reason, she decided to take my casual remark in the spirit of an order.
At the end of one year of excellent work, I was called by Jagpal Singh into Yuddhvir’s cabin and handed a letter of promotion. Thereafter, we got busy talking about our plans for the future.
When I returned to my cabin, there was a piece of paper lying on my table bearing Snehlata’s beautiful handwriting. It read: ‘Congrats! When is the party? On the twenty-first floor (only the two of us!).’
I absent-mindedly put the note in my pocket. On reaching home, I ordered for Sudha her favourite pizza and showed her the letter of promotion. Snehlata’s note was also lying on my writing table. Sudha looked at it and smiled, and then placed the note under the glass tabletop.
The new year was approaching. I thought of going up to the twenty-first floor in the company of Snehlata on 1 January. Shalini had also asked for a party. On the afternoon of the first, I treated her to piping hot samosas and jalebis and found her saying, ‘We should have included Snehlata in the party.’
‘She doesn’t like samosas and jalebis. She said “no” to me very clearly. But she did congratulate me. She’s happy with my promotion.’