Enterprising media ka thePublic Agenda patrakaron ko lootane ka

MANGLESH DABRAL ( SAHITYA ACADEMY AWARDEE ) KI RAM KAHANEE: EK MAHILA VAKIL NE….

Shajimon Joseph ,

I acknowledge with great delight the receipt of your email in response to my unwillingness to continue with TPA.

Nevertheless , i am hugely amused that TPA is discontinuing an ” arrangement” which never began. Perhaps , it has escaped your mind that TPA had never issued a letter engaging me.

You will also recollect that I had quit in October itself after a valid confrontation with Mangalesh Dabral.
However , you chased me and using emotional pleas ( that I am like your “elder sister” etc ) persuaded me to return for the time being. More of that later.

Anyway , as the saying goes ” Good riddance to bad rubbish”.

In hindsight , I guess it was my mistake , in a manner of speaking . I should never have got involved with a smalltime , feudalistic , chauvinistic,didactic set-up like TPA.

Let me retrace the sequence of events :

a) I have been in the field of Journalism long enough to be known to people in the field. So it was not surprising that Manglesh Dabral got in touch with me several times requesting me to write for TPA.

b) After quite a few such phone calls from him , I was happy to contribute an Article , which was duly published in the March Issue of TPA , with the introduction ” The writer is a seasoned Journalist and Social Activist”. This is indeed true because I have spent many more years in Media than either Mangalesh or yourself.

c) Subsequently also , Dabral kept following up with me to write more Articles.
Once on the way , I told him occasionaly that I was interested to see TPA transformed into a readable magazine and that I had some ideas to share. He didn’t respons as he seemed in a toothless position to decide anything in TPA.
d) So it happened that we had our first conversation on 24th August 2010. If your memory doesn’t fail you, you must remember that I never came to you for a job but I did tell you that I had some ideas to share for improving TPA , which had pretty shallow write-ups and poor reader-appeal. You were in Patna then . During your very next visit to Delhi, on your call, we met. My impression of that meeting : you were pretty desperate to find ways and means of saving a stagnating TPA which was desperately trying to come out of its infancy.

You were overjoyous to see me and reminded me of a common friend Sunil Menon with whom you had come to meet me in my newspaper office at Patna in 1990. You shared your unhappiness and frustration with Dabral , who was neither creative nor a person with journalistic instincts.
You also talked at length about the lack of Leadership qualities in him.

You also gave me all the information about salaries and people and told me how dissatisfied you were with most of them. Very specifically , you mentioned that S U , who had never worked in a newspaper had been brought in by Krishnan Dubey @25k and when Dubey left leaving the magazine in lurch, SU was given an increment of another 20 k in the hope that he would bring out the magazine out. Alas! In your words, ‘he failed miserably. He can smile well but he can not be a journalist, he is a complete duffer”, you said.

In conclusion , you insisted on my joining TPA from the very next day and assured me that i would have to come for only 5-6 hours a day except during the time when the Magazine would have to be uploaded. You also assured me that i could take my time to do my stories at my own pace.

To be candid , i had my own qualms about joining a magazine which had numerous errors on each page and depended a lot on the Net for its articles. But , you would not take a NO for an answer and managed to persuade me to join TPA . You even called Mangalesh in your room and reintroduced me with him in a highly regardfull manner. You didn’t even consult him while offering me DE’s designation or even your CC who is there because he is a personal friend of one of your lords. ( one example of your leadership quality).
e) As it happened , Dabral and others started feeling very insecure from the day I joined TPA.
I had no option but to point out the very loose way in which TPA was being brought out.
Every Issue missed its deadline. Every page had numerous errors . There was poor attention to creativity. In short , there was no flair. TPA was directionless.

f) I also think Dabral resented the fact that I had excellent contacts with a lot of well-known people in Media , in Civil Society , in Arts , in Politics. Consequently , he was always like I also know him/her and used to edit the portion of my articles where these references came, be it Mahashweta Devi or Yogendra Yadav or Mahesh Rangarajan or anyone else.

g) I had stopped coming to TPA the day I Mangalesh tried to bully me with his idiotic utterances that he was my editor and I would have to do what he says and I confronted with him. After that you kept calling me continuously, appealing me to come to office and even blackmailed me emotionally calling me ‘your elder sister’, ‘if you are with me I have no fear, I will change the whole team’,’please make an assessment of the current form of TPA and secretly make a dummy issue by December to be relaunched on its 3rd anniversary’. Which everyone knows I was working on and about the assessment sent to you. (Shajimon, you thought I am an emotional fool, it is a half truth, yes, I am emotional but not a fool, I have all the records what you told me and what I told you – as a matter of fact – you forgot that I am fighting on the street for the people’s cause and doing democratic journalism since the days your mother used to change your nappies. The very first day when you started criticising your senior editorial staff to a visitor like me I became aware of you as a untrust worthy person who, given the chance (and power), wouldn’t spare anyone.

You called me with several calls and appeasing words and when I came back, you almost were broke down that if I don’t continue Mangalesh will succeed to plant some Manohar Nayak for whom he is lobbying with you for more than a year and also that Nayak is Mangalesh’s aadmi and you don’t want to bring him. You were very upset with Mangalesh that he intervined and annoyed me over Bihar issue and is so insecured. You told me and SU to oversight what Mangalesh says and do what was instructed by you. When I told you that I respect him as a poet, you tontingly said that you don’t know whether he is a poet or what, you only know that he is a bad editor and slowly and gradually the responsibilities of the major tasks of the magazine will be transferred to me, to the extent that even if I do not want to work with Mangalesh, no worries, I will work on special projects – breaking news, coverstories ideas and outstation special stories – with you and Venkitesh. I wish you could deny all this but you can not because I have records of the same (otherwise I would have left my phone in the TPA office on saturday for the sweeper but not prefer to go for a few thousand’s instrument because I had cleared my desk on thursday itself when you were having ‘high tea’ and cracking cheap jokes with your drunkard colleagues Mangalesh and gang ). I was not surprised when on the day of uploading- thursday- Mangalesh himself called me in my cabin to say that I should go home @ 2pm. He wanted the office to be empty with only you drunkards gang. Poor chap, he thinks everyone is a fool except him though the case is reverse.

I wanted to tell you about my final decision, so I came back and saw you folks having your blast (what else such guest rooms are meant for?) I cleared my desk. Next day I came to talk to you but you were disappeared from the office in the evening after Venkitesh left.

Had you had the courage to talk to me across the table I wouldn’t need to waste my time in writing this mail. But sometimes people like you should be shown mirror, though I am afraid you guys hardly know what it means to look into the mirror, metaphorically. They see the tie and suit and the Big designation they carry – CE- COO – acquired on the basis of their loyalty to their lords and not because of their talent or capacity. TPA is a live example of your faillure – from content to form and the set up to nonfertile enviromment inside and outside.
I remember once you told me that if you have been given a task to cook royal recipe for the king, your responsibility ends with cooking a tasty food whether the King eats it or not ( You wanted to give me a lesson why I dared to ask your circulation man about his plan for Delhi). My response was flat – ‘I don’t agree with you.’ I can not do anything for the sake of money as a slave . I make choices on the basis of what way my deeds makes a positive impact. In other words, tomorrow as a general manager or director or COOOO you can be a butcher, I can not because people like you work for money and power and I work for basic livelihood and to empower people. That is why your confidence comes from the prizes you get from the corporates by pleasing them and my confidence comes from the extraordinary people who empower me by allowing me to be their cotraveller.
This mail is because you do not forget your crime of lying and trying to humiliate people. You feel threatened of strong people, specially women, who speak their mind fearlessly hence you use your ‘official’ power to silent them.
I wish you could have been succeded in your endevour downsize my spirit and dignity like you have done to all TPA staff. I am an aethist but if there is a GOD, he may give you the wisdom which I was made believe for sometime. You have exploited my pure emotions so I may forgive you but will not forget. You are neither a good christian nor a good human.
Now something about Mangalesh, the poet. In our Rajasthan there is a saying – char paise ki handi gai, kutte ki jaat pahchani gai- I didn’t know there are dogs with brahminical origin and patriarchal mindset too. He has good command over the skill of taking advantage whereever he can get from. He rents his house to 3 brothers and commissions them write ups so that they can not delay the payment. He employes people from his tenant’s family and write for them in their name to oblige them. He bring paharis and brahmins to TPA and uses them as their personal stenographers. They type his personal assignments from the publishers all the time, that keeps them busy and Mangalesh happy. He always publishes writers who are on his side in the literary circle and keep really good writers at bay, result? The literary portion has become a joke among intellectuals who are free recepients of TPA. He takes leave to go to Dehradun and is found in a ultra left cultural conference in Bhilai. He says that he doesn’t see anyone as his boss but wants everyone to obey him blindly.
There are three kind of skilled people – one with technical skills – like a carpenter can make a good table – second, craftperson who can improvise the table into a craft piece by putting some innovative design to soothe the eyes – and third, the artist who transforms the table into an art piece able to blow one’s mind. Unfortunately, Mangalesh is a carpenter in poetry, he probably knows how to put words in a row, but to be an artist one needs to walk the talk. He also needs a good mirror and time will give him one.
Shajimon, I remember you told me last month that I should forgive Mangalesh as he is like fatherly. That time I didn’t tell you story, today sharing this. In many of his experiences with truth with women one supreme court woman lawyer narrates her experience with him. One day she dropped him from a common point to Mayur Vihar where she also lives. It was a courtsey dropping since she is also a writer on legal matters. This man grabbed the chance and tried to convince her for something undignified. She is a brave woman, she gave him her piece of mind.
This is one incident among so many. I just hope that these people are at least father to their own biological children. That too is a big achievement for them. These people are in the forefront on the discourse about women.
I despise.
Kiran Shaheen

ye to sirf do kahani thi en dono ka to pura ramayan likha ja sakta hain sale kamine ka. ye log magazine nahi chale rahe bulki ek larai kare aur karane ka adda hain ek to patarkarita chhor ka DALALI kam karta hain aur dusra uska chamcha hain dono mil kar pura maja lutte hain.
KAHANI ABHI BAKI HAIN MERE DOST…. BAS DEKHE JAO MAIN KAYA KAYA KHULASA KARTA HUN BHADAS KS MADHAYAM SE
WAIT………..