One of the most ‘Debonair’ editors of our times, Vinod Mehta, speaks to Pritha Kejriwal on his Memoirs, memories, media and much more…
Let me just start by saying that your memoir was a fascinating read… made me so much more conscious of my own role as an editor… thank you for writing it… But tell me, Memoirs can be cathartic, disturbing, brave or hypocritical depending upon the honesty of the writer…you have made quite a few revelations, and I’m sure have left out some… so what is this process of writing memoirs, what makes you decide what to omit and what not to?
First of all, I decided to make a list of the significant events of my life. I didn’t exclude anything which was significant, not always in a good sense but also in a negative sense, but was significant…I excluded very little…as an editor of more than 40 years…so many things happened…There were some I couldn’t recall, so I excluded. I decided to write about things which were interesting from mine and hopefully, the reader’s point of view. Then I decided that if I’m going to write about these things, I must be absolutely candid and honest. Even if I happen to hurt somebody in the process. I didn’t deliberately set out to hurt anybody. For instance, in my discussion of the Radia tapes there were people in my own profession who were unhappy with what I was doing. They were a part of the story, a part of the narrative, I couldn’t exclude them. Shobhaa De, who I’ve known for a long time, I had a certain incident with her. I kept quiet for 17 years but had to speak now. Hence, writing became easier. Once you start playing around with your memory, once you start distorting, embellishing, suppressing…the purpose is defeated. Any life is a compendium of victories and defeats. If memoirs become self-justification, that everything you did was right and in every encounter you emerged as a better person, it’s not only boring but factually, it’s a lie. This book was a catharsis of my life; I was getting things off my chest. If I started lying here and there, the whole purpose would be defeated. I took the risk of telling the truth and I think it’s being appreciated although I would say I have made a few enemies. But these were already my enemies. For example, Dilip Padgaonkar called up the other day and asked me to deliver a lecture at a journalism school in Pune where he is teaching… where I’d be in conversation with him… I was very pleased about that…When I asked him about the book, he said, “Well, you’ve told your story, I’ll tell my story when the time comes”. I was delighted that people are mature enough to say…I have no axes to grind, but only the truth to tell.
But when I read about the earlier years… in Lucknow and in London… I got this feeling of trying so hard to look into your soul and it was constantly eluding me… for eg: you are generally dismissive about yourself in those important formative years and yet something makes you want to go and pay homage at the grave of Marx..! I just found a missing synapse there…
I wish I could answer that question. It is a difficult one to answer. I didn’t try and hide anything. You may be right. I’m not genetically a very warm and emotional sort of a person. I’m somewhat reluctant to show my emotions for people. Although I may have some feelings for somebody, I don’t like over-emotionalism like in Hindi films. That perhaps reflects in the book too.
You named your dog ‘Editor’ and somewhere in the book you said that something that endeared George Orwell to you was the fact that he called his dog ‘Marx’! So tell me, what is so endearing about a man who calls his dog ‘Marx’?
Well, he was a Marxist and he began his life as one. He was with the Soviet Union because of the communism there. It just goes to show that your greatest beliefs and convictions are not beyond criticism and not beyond making a joke. I don’t like dogma and don’t like dogmatic people. Communists tend to be dogmatic people. They see life in a fixed framework. I also write I’m an admirer of Graham Greene who liked priests and communists who went to church and I think one should always allow nothing in this world to escape critical analysis. You may validate it after analysis. Religious people sometimes say that a particular thing is beyond debate and discussion. I believe on the contrary, that things get enriched after debate and discussion and when they emerge after one; your faith gets stronger in them. I have said that secularism which I imbibed in Lucknow, was an instinctive choice , almost a part of my DNA but had no reason to not believe that it needs any modification by me…As a journalist I have tried to examine my own approach to journalism which is open and vulnerable to self criticism and vulnerable to change.. I don’t like fixed positions on anything.
I was talking to a friend sometime ago and he said, when he thinks of Vinod Mehta, he thinks of Debonair. Can you tell me about the growth and decline of a magazine like Debonair? Do you think it revolutionised sexual politics in those orthodox times?
I wish I could say that. It didn’t do anything like that. In fact I left finally because after 7 years of trying to do something like that, I failed miserably! In the end it was still known as a girly magazine. I recount an incident with the former PM Vajpayee in the book…
Where he had to hide the magazine under his pillow…
Yes… Although we had the likes of Ruskin Bond and so many others writing. I mentioned all the writers that I managed to get… But in the 70’s, I also mention an incident with Kabir Bedi… Here was a man giving lectures about the naked female body and about how beautiful it was… And then he opposed his own wife’s naked pictures being published. We also had people like Protima Bedi who were mavericks as such…The mood at that time was still very orthodox… Debonair was seen as a bold and brave attempt, but in the end, as far as our profile goes… We were seen as a raunchy magazine. This is true of Playboy as well.
Playboy and Rolling Stone are two of the finest examples of progressive magazines being published in the US. Both have always held politically left views. Playboy’s interviews every month have been with radical activists. Likewise Rolling Stone in every issue has one article that’s the longest- around 10-15 pages of political commentary – extremely radical and deep rooted in left ideology. And yet, Playboy is bought for the nude centrespreads, and Rolling Stone for the Top-ten charts. Do you think by mixing contents, we lose the true essence of what could be good journalism?
Yes that’s true and I couldn’t do it any other way. I couldn’t produce a magazine which didn’t have the kind of content I wanted. Because that justified my own presence over there. If it was only a girly magazine or one of those naked women magazines, then I would find it very uncomfortable. And the reason I left was because I couldn’t change the character of the magazine… because it was still defined by the centrefold.
What do think of the direction Pioneer took after you left?
The Pioneer is now owned by Chandan Mitra, who is a BJP Rajya Sabha member. So it must reflect his political allegiances. And I’m glad I’m not there. Chandan is a friend but our politics are different. Also in case of Pioneer, since you know where it is coming from…there is no secrecy about its allegiances…so you know what the BJP is thinking after reading their editorial pages.
You introduced Arundhati Roy to the magazine audience – this unique blend of progressivism into mainstream journalism was so striking…how did you manage to pull it off…how did you manage to pull off ‘the end of imagination’ during times when the so called ‘Indian patriotism’ rhetoric was at its peak?
As an editor of a magazine you must be prepared to offend some people. Some people…Not all people, or you’ll be in a very serious trouble. The mood at the time when the nuclear bomb was exploded was very nationalistic and right wing. I was anyways very uncomfortable with it and the BJP government had been in power for only a month or so and they suddenly did this…and when Arundhati told me she had written something like this…the length was also quite long…8000 words..But I printed it and ever since and we sort of developed a relationship with her and everything she wrote over the years. One of the last articles printed, that she wrote, was 21000 words – ‘Walking with the comrades’….everybody said no one will read this…not because of its quality, but because of its length. But that was the one piece which got the most response and stirred the emotions of people. This is one of those fallacies, that people don’t want to read.. Even if the length is long, people like reading about subjects like these and they should also be written in a way which is provocative, elusive and even infuriating.
But then again there is this charge of boutique leftism…the question of romanticising the coverage on Maoists…
You could always say that…but I think if you look at the government’s own position on Maoists…In the beginning Mr. Chidambaram was hot on the fact that there is only a law and order solution to Maoism…but after Arundhati Roy and others started writing, now at least we have come to a stage where we are talking of development issues…not the Maoists…the Maoists constitute just 1%…Even those women with slippers and bows and arrows…How did the Maoists manage to motivate them…they obviously had some resentment and grouses against the Indian state..And therefore we said that whatever you want to do to the Maoists, you must first concede that they are doing a better job than the Indian state in answering some difficulties that these people had. I am not prepared to believe that grandmothers with bows and an arrow are India’s greatest security threat! That is just absurd!
In a recent conversation, I think you said something like, as long as Page 3 doesn’t invade Page 1, I’m fine…
What I was trying to suggest…Like Justice Katju had said the other day, “why are you covering Dev Anand?” Now he has brought more happiness in the lives of people than our politicians. It is the same thing with the parties and page 3s. Young people like to go for parties. That is not committing a great sin! They like to see their pictures in the papers. You got your main paper and your page 3. If you don’t like it, you don’t read it. There are some people who don’t like the main paper and like only page 3. This is democracy in action. Some people may not like to read it. You cannot impose what you like to read on others.
So what’s the struggle of the media today, to you – ensuring that page 3 doesn’t invade page 1…or destroying the existing page 1 and imagining a completely new one?
I think we have to re-imagine a new page1 because of the digital revolution and because the people are reading newspapers less and less and getting more and more information from the Internet. This is the young generation between the age group of 22-35. We can’t say only JNU professors and IIM’s can read us. We want to engage with the young in this country. I’m very keen in engaging with the young…That’s why we need to re-imagine. By which I don’t mean dumb-ing down and trivialising the news. First we need to assess what their need and requirements are and how they like their news and transform the newspaper… We are a print medium after all.
Don’t we also need to re-imagine the kind of issues that we cover in our paper today? What about this general disinterest in the English speaking readers and the idea that all urbanity need not know about agriculture, labour, trade unions…are we swimming inside our own bubble?
Of course, yes. But in my opinion, there is too much of politics in India, what I call the hard politics. Lok Sabha – in and out etc etc. People want to know about development matters. I was very delighted with the extensive coverage and front page stories given to Dev Ananad. People reimagined their youth through him. He occupied the front page for days and days. That is also pg1 news and not pg3. Even atrocities on women. Divorce problems. I heard somewhere today adultery is also being criminalised today. If a man has to sue for divorce, he has to present a picture of his wife with someone in the bed with her. That is all rubbish. If there is discussion and debate about that, it can be very important news. We have to find a ready mix…90% people are not interested in party-baazi. Who the hell is interested in all that? Take for eg. Anna Hazare. Whatever your views on him, he managed to capture public imagination. Not because he was a Gandhian, but because he picked up an issue which concerned everybody from the rich man to poor man, it concerned everybody. We must democratise our papers. We must consider everything as important news. Even the cinema world…that’s not much on page1. What about that woman with a rather strange body?… Vidya Balan. It is quite interesting what she is trying to do. Here is the girl who has taken on the mainstream film industry… she decided to show her body, simply because she was not a success till now… So she decided to change her profile. And she has done it without any kind of embarrassment…That should be on Page 1.
What do you think is the role of small alternate media today?
They must find a view. They must find an area. They shouldn’t duplicate what is coming in the mainstream. Alternate media must find a niche. If you try and repeat what is appearing in papers and journals…There is no point. Even if it is small, they must specialize. General interest magazines like Illustrated Weekly…don’t work anymore.
What I meant was the fundamental difference between the modes of operation and the agendas of the big corporate media and small independent media...
Yes one must decide one’s stance…whether you are left wing, right wing, centrist, capitalist…either you are a campaigning paper or something else. Like what Tehelka is… they are a campaigning magazine.
Recently the Press Council chairman lambasted the electronic media… what do think of the performance of the electronic media?
Obviously there are some problems. There is sensationalism, trivialisation… perhaps too much shouting…too much conflict. Yet, electronic media is the force for good in the media today…Like the story of the Sarpanch in Punjab slapping a woman, the print media would not be able to cover it as well as the electronic media. That was a good thing. The drama and impact was much better on TV. Of course there are some problems like self regulation. But by and large, it’s a force for good. Some stories are tailor-made for TV.
In the end, Let me have you take some names…
No, No…I won’t comment on that. I have made too many enemies already!
Your views on Arnab Goswami…
He just released my book. They are all good people. All my friends are very sensitive. I won’t say much. In case of Arnab, it must be said that he has been very successful…whether you like him or not… in creating an identity for himself and his channel.
