Ranchi was a sleepy little town back in 1975. Compared to a dozen daily newspapers that come out today, there was not one then. Newspapers from Calcutta, the Dak or the early edition, arrived by train in the morning while the late city editions of newspapers from Delhi, more up to date with news, reached in the afternoon by air. There was of course no television, not even Doordarshan, which was confined to Delhi at the time. Offices of news agencies PTI and UNI were almost always the first to receive information from the outside world—while people with access to the newsroom of the All India Radio were marginally better off—AIR’s editors and reporters had relatively fewer restrictions on making phone calls that cost a fortune if they ever came through.