Back Then...

S. Rakshit | Senior Photo Coordinator
I used to operate out of a medical representative’s bag, which had all the transparencies, TP mounts, scissors and a diary with numbers of all the photographers in the country to source pictures from. The photo-library would travel with me, on my scooter, from home to office and back. Today this library of visuals is a source for many, including international publications.

Outlook in the early days was a whirlwind of activity. Pictures were sent not as e-mail attachments but came in air consignments and had to be collected from the airport. On one such occasion, when a crucial packet of pictures was to arrive from Patna, a hyper-anxious Vinod Mehta was in our parking lot, eyes on the road, because the rider had been gone two hours and it was way past deadline. When the poor rider did arrive, VM literally snatched the packet from the flummoxed man’s hands and delivered it personally to a very nervous photo-department. The errant packet had apparently been hiding under a coffin in the cargo bay!

Sasidharan K. | Editorial Manager
It has never been easy handling phones for Vinod Mehta. Irate NRI BJP-wallahs, angry ministers, enraged corporates, I’ve had to hear them—and fend off—all. The toughest perhaps was taking the call I got sometime in 2000. The phone rang, I picked it up and was asked (in gruff Hindi) to be put through to editor Vinod Mehta. Who’s calling, I asked. Dead silence, and the phone was disconnected. A few seconds later, it rang again. Again, same voice, same request. Again I asked who it was. Again, silence, and a disconnected phone. The same thing a third time, and a third time I asked who it was. “Tu to bahut sawaal karta hai re,” I was told this time. I explained my predicament to the voice at the other end, saying I needed to tell the boss who it was. “Bol de, Bhai baat kar raha hai!” I was told. I would have dismissed it as a joke had we not done a cover on Dawood Ibrahim just the week before. Trembling knees and all, I promptly put the caller on hold, told Vinod who it was, and scooted for dear life....

Ajith Pillai | Senior Editor
It fell upon us to tackle the D-Company. My Hindi (luckily) being very southie in style, I roped in our best Hindi-speaking reporter to do the talking. At the appointed hour, four in the afternoon to be precise, the phone rang, and a thick voice said, “Thehro, bada bhai baat karega”. Chhota Shakeel came on the line. “Haan bhai,” the reporter said in barely steady voice, “humse kya khata ho gayi?” “Aap log jo man mein aata hai chhap dete hain,” Shakeelbhai thundered. “Thehro, Bhai baat karega....” By now we were on conference call, this time with the Don himself! “Kisne kiya story, naam batao,” the don demanded. As the entire department listened on with bated breath, we managed to convince him our source was from the intelligence. “Uska naam batao.” It wasn’t going to be easy. Never mind the name, we told him, we did try getting an interview with you, but got no response. “Baat nahin kiya to jo man mein aaya chhap diya?” “Aisi kya baat hai bhai,” Outlook reasoned, “aap hamein ab fax bhej dijiye, hum chhap denge.” The fax did arrive, we inserted questions in between and that became our story, ‘Dawood responds to Outlook Story’.    Ultimately, Dawood khush hua.

Shekhar Suvarna | Deputy Manager, Mumbai
Back then, Outlook’s pages were made in Delhi but printed at Tata Press in Mumbai. Electronic transmission was still some years away and one man, Anup Dwivedi, would travel back and forth from Delhi carrying positives. It was my job then to collect them from the airport and rush them to the press. Once, I even walked all the way from Dadar to Chembur carrying the positives when the Mumbai trains were brought to a halt in 1996!

Bishwadeep Moitra | Executive Editor
Layout specialists we always were, the only time we got creative with a byline, we met a very angry owner of the initials. To indicate to the copy editors that we needed to expand B.P. Saha’s name, I helpfully put in Bomkesh Padulia Saha. No one caught the fiction, and that is how the byline actually went in our 1997 Partition issue! Needless to say, the ex-DGP was not amused. I still don’t know his full name. Pity, they didn’t have Google Search then!

Manisha Saroop | Senior Assistant Editor
Vinod’s always been amazed at the Outlook desk’s ability to eat; none intrigued him more than ardent foodie Pothik Ghosh, especially when he’d be digging into a giant Double Big Boy Burger. Once when a fellow deskie found his burger missing, Vinod readily turned to the only man he could think culprit, and blurted, “What Pothik, YOU ate up HIS burger too?” The other thing he loved doing was deliberately getting our names wrong. No matter how many times he corrected him, Vimal Sarkar was Tiwari for Vinod, and Varkey George, Vaiko, simply because the Tamil politician had more recall for him than the deputy copyeditor. Even if he did get the names right, more by accident than design, he’d smile—wickedly—and revert to his name!

Alka Gupta | Librarian
Outlook bosses have always taken exceptional care of me. Expecting at the time of our 1997 I-Day Special, Tarun Tejpal and Co would have food sent specially for me. Again at the fifth-year celebration of Outlook, I was waiting in a long queue for a coffee at the India Habitat Centre. VM saw me from the other end of the room, got a coffee made and hollered out across the room: “ALKA, Coffee!”

Sunil Menon | Senior Editor
Having landed in Outlook straight from a newspaper news desk—a very male, very hardscrabble kind of place, with profanities flying around freely—I found myself in a department full of females. Six of them, and me! That was unusual. Gulu Ezekiel, our sports honcho, used to say: “The Outlook copy desk is made up of Menon and Women”. Whether that was to be deemed a lucky predicament would depend on your point of view. At any rate, I thought my colleague Ramananda Sengupta much the luckier guy. On him fell the onerous task of making polite conversation with J.N. Dixit—who would come in as foreign affairs consultant—for long afternoons. For his efforts, Ram earned a fine collection of pipes!