Days rolled by, work went on, life moved on. I found a way to work amicably with all my colleagues. I used their plus points, and worked around their minus points.
By then, I knew the writing style of each reporter like the back of my hand, I knew exactly how each would treat a story, use words and phrases etc. I could edit them ‘blindfolded’. So my work was not too tough, except for the odd articles written by our stringer Saibaba.
A very pleasant, elderly gentleman, Saibaba took to journalism rather late. It’s never too late to learn anything. However, Saibaba never learnt the meaning of the word ‘brevity’. I doubt if he ever will. His stories were always 1000+ words. After one round of editing it comes down to 400-500. Another round, it’s just 300 or even less and to the point. Despite my telling him several times, he continued filing his ‘epics’. His phone calls were the same…long, long, long! I learnt to deal with him too.
Anyway, getting back to the story…
I easily tackled reporter’s work. Of course they were improving by the day. And thanks to their efforts and hard work, most of their stories didn’t need a total rewrite anymore. In fact, some of them were really good…hardly needed any editing.
I gave up on Murali. Come hell or high water, Murali ‘rushed’ into office at 6pm. So I used to give him one story and just let him be. In the meantime, I used to finish other stories. As I was starting on a story, I used to tell Sattar, the designer to come up with a good layout, I asked him for a word count too. By the time he was done to the layout, the story would be ready to be placed. Of course, I had to put brakes on Sattar’s gimmicks with Quark Express, but that was not a big issue.
The reporter team was also very helpful. On any given day, one of them would be at the desk, helping out. That made my life much easier.
I’m sure you’ve heard of people who get a ‘high’ from power…from being in a particular a post or position. I met one. They come in different types. Some are simply arrogant, some love the fact that they can ask others to do stuff…order people around, some others like it when people ask their permission for things, even to pee…And there are even some who get their kicks from signing leave forms and just hearing someone call them ‘sir’!!!
I don’t know what was Vasu’s high, but he definitely wasn’t an arrogant person. To this day, I value and treasure his friendship.
And so I let him be…He loved to talk to reporters, ask them what they are doing, tell them to do stuff etc. That was his job, and he was good. But something that bugged me was that he never once took any of my suggestions. Wonder why? Way of showing one's 'power'? So sad!
And he butted his head into the desk, giving direction etc. I just let him be, even though I had to get into ‘action’ very often.
I struggled to contain my laughter when once, during a meeting, Vasu told Mr Murthy: “Sir, I cannot go to HMTV (the telugu news channel the company owns) to coordinate for news. If I step out of the room, the desk work will suffer.” This, after Murali or I edited stories, gave captions and headlines and came up with good design suggestions.
“Dude, I am alive,” I wanted to scream, but I just let it go!
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