Pens and guns seem uneasy companions, even with the spectre of death lurking in the shadows.
Pune-based poet and artist Ganesh Vispute and Goan writer Damodar Mauzo have both featured prominently on a hitlist recovered in 2017 from the alleged killers of Bengaluru-based journalist Gauri Lankesh. But their collective experience of dealing with security personnel allotted to them presents an uneasy account of how writers, who tend to live reclusive and private lives, find it difficult to adjust to the looming presence of an armed policeman, who is never out of earshot.
Both artists, who are part of the Dakshinayan Abhiyaan, a collective largely comprising of Left-aligned writers and artists, were provided security by Maharashtra and Goa governments, after a spate of gruesome, targeted murders of rationalists and intellectuals over the last decade.
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Anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead when he was on a morning walk in 2013. Communist Party of India leader Govind Pansare too was shot during a morning walk in 2015, the same year when Kalburgi was gunned down. Journalist Gauri Lankesh was gunned down by assailants outside her home in Bengaluru in 2017. The murders occurred in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
In 2018, when Mauzo received a phone call from a local bureaucrat friend who requested a meeting with the former before office hours, the 78-year-old writer thought there was good news coming his way.
“I do not know why my friend who is a bureaucrat requested a meeting early in the morning. I thought maybe I am getting an award,” Mauzo said with a wry smile.
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Instead, when Mauzo met the bureaucrat, an intelligence official joined in, and broke the news of the death threat and broached issue of security cover. Mauzo says, he initially rejected the offer of state security, but reluctantly accepted it later in the conversation. Some years later incidentally. Mauzo incidentally won the Jnanpith award – India’s highest literary honour -- for the year 2022.
“Ever since I have been given police protection, my privacy has suffered. Particularly when I travel, especially with my wife. I cannot talk to her very freely, because their eyes and ears are open,” Mauzo said.
Ganesh Vispute has been allotted ‘Y’ level security, which accords him a personal security officer (PSO) provided by the state. The bodyguards keep changing over time. Their bosses, Vispute says, change the guards when they suspect a sense of familiarity brewing between them and the people they are supposed to protect.
“They just sit outside the house. But since I am all alone at home, just writing and painting, I used to invite them for lunch. Some of them were studying for higher education. I helped them. They passed their exams and were promoted. The system knew that I was involved with them, so they transferred them,” says Vispute.
It was awkward for the poet to deal with the physical presence of a bodyguard always in close proximity. But the real discomfiture, he says, occurs when he has to travel out of town, with the security official in tow.
“We travel by train or bus. We are not that rich that we can always hire taxi or drive our own car. When we travel with our family, generally it is in a small car, which accommodates around five people. Travelling with a security guard, wife and kids pose a sense of discomfort,” according to Vispute.
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“And the funny thing is, when we travel by train, railway officials do not allow security (guards) on board without advance notice. When I have had to travel suddenly to Delhi or somewhere, the bodyguards board at Surat, or Gwalior to escort you, but the ticket checker (TC) harasses them. This confrontation is very awkward,” Vispute said.
Mauzo on the other hand is not as impressed with his Goa Police security escorts, as he is with their counterparts in Maharashtra.
“I have seen at least six PSOs here (in Goa). Whenever I go to Maharashtra, their personnel are trained, you can figure it out. Here they lounge about. They take it so lightly,” Mauzo said, singling out only two Goa Police PSOs attached to him for some time for exemplary standards.
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Morning walks have proved to be fatal for Pansare and Dabholkar, who were killed during their early strolls. Mauzo has an interesting anecdote about just how serious the Goa Police tend to take their security chores.
When Mauzo was first allocated state security cover, a motorcycle escort and a policeman armed with a rifle trailed him on his walks. After a while, the bike broke down and the rifle-bearing policeman disappeared. One of his police escorts also could not keep pace with the author known in his village for his brisk walk. “He said he would have to join a gym to keep pace with me,” Mauzo said.
