Chitra Subramaniam

Odear, O dear! Dear Secret Diary what the hell am I going to do with these 122 filing cabinets, 7,869 files and nearly one tonne of paper. It was an act of great betrayal by that man Ottavio Quattrochi. Why did he have to die just when I was ready with my latest 16-part serial on Bofors, which this time only The Hindu was ready to publish? I don’t know why these other Indian editors avoided me. Is it because a Rs 64-crore scam somehow seems like peanuts?

I don’t know how I was caught in the Bofors web because everyone thought Sweden was heaven on earth, an incorruptible place. The Indian army generals were so keen, praising the gun for its quality, that they forgot arms agents all over the world charged commissions on their deals. As a god-fearing south Indian, I expected India and Bofors would finalise the gun deal after a Satyanarayan katha, putting garlands and kumkum on the guns and welcoming them at the ports with a maha aarti. Our media, including myself, were shocked when Swedish Radio announced the Rs 64 crore scam.

And then my career boomed. Enter Mr Q. Had he belonged to any other nation, we would have ignored him. But Italy? It was the land of pasta, spaghetti and Sonia Gandhi. We the Indian media had had enough of the Gandhi family and if there was no scandal around them, we had to manufacture one. So Mr Q and Bofors were a godsend for us.

The great investigative Indian press was always concerned with corruption but only in the Congress and the Gandhi family. They were easy targets for me. The Indian Express grabbed every single bit of news I sent them. To add to my delight, the Mahavishnu of Mount Road (The Hindu) which never mentioned the massive corruption in the adjoining Madras Municipal Corporation (the ruling DMK volunteers would have invaded the office and wrought havoc) discovered that Stockholm was thousands of miles away and it was safe to report and carry pieces by me that confused readers more and more.

I had a significant role in the great awakening in the Indian media that only the Gandhi family was corrupt. But the courts did not agree with us even if Martin Ardbo (Bofors executive) said so in his diary. Mr Q was an enigma, he was the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Bofors saga. He was here, there, everywhere but our CBI could not get him, despite the letter rogatory. Our media, which even today does its ‘investigative’ reporting from police and CBI sources, suddenly discovered Stockholm, Geneva and Paris. Some of the ‘ace’ reporters and editors had a good time over there but nothing more came out of it.

Mind you, the Q chapter isn’t over. To start with, here’s one question: how do we know it was Q who has died? I am going to investigate the story...be ready for further bombshells.

The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 AT gmail.com