Vinod Mehta would have scoffed at it with his trademark guffaw. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted as soon as news of his passing away came in on Sunday. He had never quite warmed up to the idea of a Modi-led India; he only went so far as to give Modi a chance.
And Twitter? He got an account only late last year to promote Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me, the sequel to his memoir Lucknow Boy. Vinod Mehta was trending at Number 3 on Twitter for most of the day, just behind #AusVsSL World Cup match. Cricket was his favourite sport.
Mehta held a particularly unenthusiastic view of the social media (he began using the laptop only two years ago). You could try to persuade him but at some point he would simply switch tracks and ask about the piece of juiciest latest gossip, “So, what’s the latest in Bombay?” It was also his favourite opening line in most conversations we had during the eight years I worked in Outlook as the Mumbai bureau chief.
Admirable nonchalance
Mehta may have been a familiar face on television debates, especially on Times Now, but did not take it as seriously as his hosts did. It brought him recognition, which I suspect, he enjoyed as much as his evening peg but that was it. “Television is all right for sensationalism,” he often said and mocked my brief stint in that world. The written word was his space, his home.
Mehta remained, right till his very end, a true and passionate devotee of the print medium. There are very few such journalist-editors left.
But that does not even begin to define him. What does is that he belonged to the rare and diminishing breed of editors who did not court people in high offices or flaunt his friendships with the mighty names of our times. He lived, ate, drank, drove, worked and worried about old age in a commonplace manner that many of us do.
It was his voice that stood out. Over the 40-odd years of his journalism, through the years in Debonair, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent, The Pioneer and Outlook, his voice came to stand for some of the most cherished values in journalism and public affairs: integrity, independence, irreverence and impartiality. He was the liberal iconoclast in the true sense, with slices of scathing wit and rare humility.
Taking responsibility
This rare blend showed on a number of occasions during my years in Outlook. One incident stands out. Mehta and senior editor Ajith Pillai were on the phone a number of times the day Mumbai was flooded in July 2005. It was, to my mind, an uncontested cover story. To my and Pillai’s horror, Mehta decided against it. I repeatedly urged him to reconsider, to no avail. When Outlook hit the stands that Friday evening, 72 hours after the torrential rain, it was with a beaming Bollywood actor. The Mumbai bureau wanted a place to hide. Mehta called the next morning and apologised. “It was my call entirely, it was a wrong call," he said. "No dust on you.”
Mehta not only made it possible for us to work in Outlook but also to be our own voices. It isn’t a small privilege in these times. He had turned the necessary ritual of standing up to corporate owners of all his publications into a fine art. “The world media was Murdochised,” he said to me on the occasion of receiving the Mumbai Press Club’s first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, “the Indian media will be Ambani-ised."
Eventually, his own space in the magazine he had founded shrank. The Radia Tapes stories had something to do with that. He seemed to want to hold on – and he did. It reminded me of his relationship with Mumbai, the city he always called Bombay. Here, in its bowels and bars, in its lingering late nights and last trains, in the august company of best friends Behram Contractor and Mario Miranda, testing out and inventing drinks that only crazy liquor lovers can, Mehta had lived the best wild part of his life in the 1980s and early '90s. His stories, the few he shared, were riveting. The others, I had heard from Behram.
Drawing a line
Mehta’s liberalism was often interpreted as pro-Congressism. It became part of his public persona but he rarely allowed it to sway his editorial judgment on political stories or personal friendships with non-Congress politicians. His easy relationship with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Arun Jaitley, among others, was testimony to this. Despite the friendship, he carried investigative stories about the former Prime Minister’s foster son-in-law; he did not let Jaitley persuade him to change his less-than-flattering opinion of Narendra Modi even when it became apparent that Modi would become the prime minister.
Mehta lived his beliefs and he created spaces for journalists – in fact a huge retinue of editors and reporters – with a deep understanding of responsibilities, both his own and that of his profession. And, he stood by his reporters and writers like a rock, among other things braving overnight train journeys from Delhi to Allahabad, despite the onset of Parkinson’s, because the Allahabad high court wanted him to be present in a defamation case that followed a cover story we did on corruption in the judiciary. He backed me all the way in the face of film world boycotts after the disparaging story of icon actor Amitabh Bachchan indulging in superstitious rituals before the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding went viral. He mentioned it in Lucknow Boy. His support meant I could do the long questioning story on Special Economic Zones despite the owners’ commercial interest in them.
Above all, he could tell the marketing men where to get off. And that is no mean thing in this era of journalism.
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And Twitter? He got an account only late last year to promote Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me, the sequel to his memoir Lucknow Boy. Vinod Mehta was trending at Number 3 on Twitter for most of the day, just behind #AusVsSL World Cup match. Cricket was his favourite sport.
Mehta held a particularly unenthusiastic view of the social media (he began using the laptop only two years ago). You could try to persuade him but at some point he would simply switch tracks and ask about the piece of juiciest latest gossip, “So, what’s the latest in Bombay?” It was also his favourite opening line in most conversations we had during the eight years I worked in Outlook as the Mumbai bureau chief.
Admirable nonchalance
Mehta may have been a familiar face on television debates, especially on Times Now, but did not take it as seriously as his hosts did. It brought him recognition, which I suspect, he enjoyed as much as his evening peg but that was it. “Television is all right for sensationalism,” he often said and mocked my brief stint in that world. The written word was his space, his home.
Mehta remained, right till his very end, a true and passionate devotee of the print medium. There are very few such journalist-editors left.
But that does not even begin to define him. What does is that he belonged to the rare and diminishing breed of editors who did not court people in high offices or flaunt his friendships with the mighty names of our times. He lived, ate, drank, drove, worked and worried about old age in a commonplace manner that many of us do.
It was his voice that stood out. Over the 40-odd years of his journalism, through the years in Debonair, The Sunday Observer, The Indian Post, The Independent, The Pioneer and Outlook, his voice came to stand for some of the most cherished values in journalism and public affairs: integrity, independence, irreverence and impartiality. He was the liberal iconoclast in the true sense, with slices of scathing wit and rare humility.
Taking responsibility
This rare blend showed on a number of occasions during my years in Outlook. One incident stands out. Mehta and senior editor Ajith Pillai were on the phone a number of times the day Mumbai was flooded in July 2005. It was, to my mind, an uncontested cover story. To my and Pillai’s horror, Mehta decided against it. I repeatedly urged him to reconsider, to no avail. When Outlook hit the stands that Friday evening, 72 hours after the torrential rain, it was with a beaming Bollywood actor. The Mumbai bureau wanted a place to hide. Mehta called the next morning and apologised. “It was my call entirely, it was a wrong call," he said. "No dust on you.”
Mehta not only made it possible for us to work in Outlook but also to be our own voices. It isn’t a small privilege in these times. He had turned the necessary ritual of standing up to corporate owners of all his publications into a fine art. “The world media was Murdochised,” he said to me on the occasion of receiving the Mumbai Press Club’s first Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, “the Indian media will be Ambani-ised."
Eventually, his own space in the magazine he had founded shrank. The Radia Tapes stories had something to do with that. He seemed to want to hold on – and he did. It reminded me of his relationship with Mumbai, the city he always called Bombay. Here, in its bowels and bars, in its lingering late nights and last trains, in the august company of best friends Behram Contractor and Mario Miranda, testing out and inventing drinks that only crazy liquor lovers can, Mehta had lived the best wild part of his life in the 1980s and early '90s. His stories, the few he shared, were riveting. The others, I had heard from Behram.
Drawing a line
Mehta’s liberalism was often interpreted as pro-Congressism. It became part of his public persona but he rarely allowed it to sway his editorial judgment on political stories or personal friendships with non-Congress politicians. His easy relationship with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Arun Jaitley, among others, was testimony to this. Despite the friendship, he carried investigative stories about the former Prime Minister’s foster son-in-law; he did not let Jaitley persuade him to change his less-than-flattering opinion of Narendra Modi even when it became apparent that Modi would become the prime minister.
Mehta lived his beliefs and he created spaces for journalists – in fact a huge retinue of editors and reporters – with a deep understanding of responsibilities, both his own and that of his profession. And, he stood by his reporters and writers like a rock, among other things braving overnight train journeys from Delhi to Allahabad, despite the onset of Parkinson’s, because the Allahabad high court wanted him to be present in a defamation case that followed a cover story we did on corruption in the judiciary. He backed me all the way in the face of film world boycotts after the disparaging story of icon actor Amitabh Bachchan indulging in superstitious rituals before the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding went viral. He mentioned it in Lucknow Boy. His support meant I could do the long questioning story on Special Economic Zones despite the owners’ commercial interest in them.
Above all, he could tell the marketing men where to get off. And that is no mean thing in this era of journalism.