Mantralay, the Maharashtra government headquarters, may be the seat of power but its common impression is that of an extremely boring place stuffed with boring people in a bleak, dank environment.
This is largely true but that is only if you are a chance visitor. To a regular, Mantralay is a veritable pit of colourful stories – scandals, affairs, intrigue, politics, and of course the quirks of sundry officers. Each visit peels forth a new character, a new experience and you go home with a richer understanding of human psychology.
Often, it’s difficult for a woman journalist to hang out with the officers. They are as wary of you as you are. But if you make the equation clear in the first few meetings, many get comfortable enough to share some of their official secrets with you.
Last year, I wrote a series of stories for a leading English daily on how the chief minister was targeting a senior IAS officer because the officer refused to help the CM’s son get a piece of land at a concessional rate. The editor egged me on to drive a virtual campaign, prompting many a disgruntled colleague to decide that it was the officer who was leaking out these investigative stories to me.
O for life to be so simple! The officer was out of the job and had no access to any files. More pertinently, wouldn’t he have leaked out these stories to other journalists he knew rather than me, who he came to know only after I wrote the big stories?
Some day, I should be able to talk about it. My calling often makes life exciting. For one sensitive story I was working on, the source was in another town. He didnt want to leave any trail. So, we created a fictitious email ID called `deepthroat’ and shared secret data through this ID. The password was funny too and made our target very clear. Each time he or I had something important to say, we would use this ID to which both of us had access.
In another instance, when a source suspected his phone line was being tapped, I changed my name—only for him. Each time I called him, I would identify myself as X, a name he was familiar with but his family wasn’t, so they would want to know who I am and what I wanted. Thankfully, he took his family into confidence soon enough.
Once a colleague heard me calling this person and got highly suspicious when she heard me identifying myself as X. She gave me curious looks for a long time after that. It is another matter that my husband, who should be more concerned, was least ruffled when he heard me announcing my new name on the home phone to the source.
Even the people we meet would make great copy if we were allowed to write about them. One senior bureaucrat, who was sidelined for all important posts, had this reflective air about him. He would speak in clipped tones, be very proper but dwell mostly in a dream world of his own making. Ask him a question and he was most likely to ponder politely and tell you very purposefully that he would not be able to answer it. The man has just retired.
I have a peculiar relationship with another one. Each meeting of ours starts with fireworks but by the time I leave, we are best pals. Till we meet again.
A serving officer, he is high strung as hell. Self-important with an air of smugness that tears out a mile to irritate you, he occupies a crucial seat of power. So meeting him is sometimes inevitable. If you are given an august audience with him at all, you are accosted first with his grim face bearing this look of if-it-wasn’t-for-me-the-world-would-collapse and you-better-look-grateful. Crisply, he arches one eyebrow and mouths, ``Yes?’’ with pursed lips and some contempt laced with exaggerated politeness.
I offer a faint smile (after fighting a kiddish impulse to stick out my tongue at him and turn heel), valiantly sit across his table and breathe (rather, exhale). The first time I met him, I told him I wanted to see for myself whether certain measures they had promised the high court were in place. That set him off. ``What do you mean, you want permission to see? Nobody is permitted to enter that place,’’ he snapped.
Each time, he dismisses any query summarily like a court of law deciding my fate. And each time, our progress report reads like a painstakingly well-set regimen. First, he embarks on a long session of media bashing, how he doesn’t care for the media and how he doesn’t need them and how he need not have entertained the media – all different ways of saying the same thing and telling me he craves attention.
Then, he informs me how he is a man of his own making and how he was once a media person himself but how things have now changed and how we are all a bunch of morons (no, he doesn’t quite say the word) -- all through which you keep your lips pursed because he gives you no room to interrupt. There’s no point looking offended because he is so taken up with his own speech he is not looking. At some point, I feel like pleading for mercy or fleeing but my professional dedication keeps me rooted.
The third stage: I face the brunt of every single media misdeed of the past 15 years (or maybe 20). At last, at weary last, when I can’t keep up the pretence any more, professional interests be damned, I tell him off too. Each time he utters a syllable, I snap at him with all the dignity I can muster, and this goes on for a merry five or ten whole minutes. At some point, I am struck by the bizarreness of the situation: Here I am, sitting across my host of the moment, with a glass of water offered by him in my hand and yelling away at him but refusing to budge.
The last stage: Providence takes pity and he gets gentler. Almost as if someone had knocked him on this head, M'lord turns Mr Hyde, decides to relent and give me my information. ``Here’s the information. You can use what you like.’’ Now, why couldn’t he have done this half an hour ago and saved us both this wear and tear?
Relieved, I smile, ask a couple of questions which he readily replies and we part grinning and beaming, putting the ugly past behind us like true sportsmen.
I naturally assume this friendship is for keeps but come the next time and he is back to his dour self. I am getting old and can’t keep up. So now, I just tip-toe my way past his chamber with a lot of reverence, and decide to miss a story rather than face one more unseasonal blast.