Thank you, Jaipur for the many learning opportunities we got as journalists

The writer, who likes to call himself ‘Lakshmana, made in Jaipur’, spells out his learnings as to how young journalists should never miss out on a chance to hone new skills

By Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi/Consulting Editor
From Bengaluru

There is something really special in the air and water of Jaipur, the Pink City that grows on you slowly, and by the time you realise it, the city and its people find a permanent place in your heart. At least this is what I found, much to my surprise, that for a person who was lamenting his luck how fate kicked him out of Dil walon ki Dilli to an overgrown village (as Jaipur seemed to me back then in the year 2000!) when I had to relocate for work, to make ends meet.

Even though for me, @40, the future looked bleak as one was thrown out of a permanent job in journalism (yes, wage board-backed permanent jobs did exist then in journalism!) and with no other support to make ends meet. Especially so, when nearly 60 journalists of all shapes, ‘sizes’, and hues were out looking for openings – too much supply of this tribe out of which many have remained jobless even to date. Some unfortunate ones got ejected from the profession – or was it they were lucky and exited into a calmer life when fate forced them to do something else and got successful too? (That’s a different story, for another time).

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For me, I was extremely fortunate that a friend became my saviour in every sense. Vipul Mudgal, who had been hired to launch the Jaipur/Rajasthan editions of Hindustan Times, not only gave me a job but also made it sound as if I was doing him a favour by relocating to Jaipur from Delhi – the city I grew up from the age of two months when I landed there with my parents.

I am not lying when I admit that there was not a single day in those early days in Jaipur when I did not rue my fate and the very Hindi environment that an English print media journalist was presented with. At press conferences, the press releases would be in Hindi language (something that was a challenge to read for me, a South Indian). The dominant language of communication was Hindi. Why, I had even packed all my belongings and went to Delhi, where my wife and son were living, completely convinced that I was not coming back!

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But then, the cold reality of the situation forced me to return to Jaipur, and it sure would have been a miserable existence but for the support, moral and materialistic, I got from the Boss. To overcome this challenge, I plunged into work, work, and more work, to the extent that I was spending a lot of time in the office and the field.

Having been out of my comfort zone (I began reading Hindi newspapers for the first time in my life) and using Hindi extensively for conversations more frequently than ever before, and even got over my confusion of dayen aur bayen (right and left), placing badi e aur choti e ki matra theek jagah par, and greater interaction with Hindi journalism and journalists than ever before. And man am I glad for that as today I am making an earning from this very skillset that I acquired reluctantly then. Not only I am contributing regularly to a respected newspaper published from Jaipur and seven other centres – Rashtradut – my fluency in oral articulation in Hindi has earned me invites from national Hindi television channels like ABP, News24, for participation in special debates, and they keep inviting me now and then.

As a fluent Hindi-speaking English journalist in Chennai, in a different avatar, surely gave me an advantage that put me on different TV channels and Hindi BBC news service that used to take my phono comments and analysis on any major development in South India.

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For sure, there are many journalists more capable, experienced, and telegenic living and working in South India, but my ability to speak Hindi, almost like a native of the Hindi belt, surely gives me an advantage.

This is something that I had never realised until it happened on its own, perhaps by accident, as a television reporter with a Hindi channel chanced to hear me answering queries from the Delhi desk. And she wanted me to give the same answers I was giving to my office on a camera for her channel. Thus, these sporadic appearances on channels.

If I was flown up and down from Bengaluru to the Noida studios – for election results (Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, and general elections to Lok Sabha that concluded recently) – it is thanks to the great learning opportunities I got when in Jaipur with Hindustan Times under a boss who gave us complete freedom to experiment, whether in terms of stories, ideas, features, or fixtures. Never the one to interfere was all support for a worker in me.

But yes, all good things come to an end.

Even the HT stint was to come to an end and bring about such dramatic changes to the nature of work I would do for a living. It took me to my first work opportunity in South India – then the combined Andhra Pradesh, the state where I hail from. It was an assignment with a global consultancy company – Adam Smith International – that was advising the GoAP (Government of Andhra Pradesh) in restructuring its public sector enterprises.

Now, from journalism to the other side was a chance for me to look at the profession from a different perspective, and God was I lucky in that all the key persons working with the major publications in Hyderabad at that time were the ones with whom I had worked with in Delhi.

For a person whose personal PR has had many challenges to still conquer, it shocks me even today that as a professional in terms of achievements of results and goals in the GoAP privatisation programme – they were excellent. The kind of press attention one got for even routine media releases and even the kind of exposure the publicity materials got from the print and television media was supremely satisfying, for me, and for my bosses.

[Also, by the same author: Learning & Unlearning: A journalist’s years with Naidu govt privatisation project – THE NEWS PORTER]

A word about my boss in this government department I was physically working in and with – Deepak Kumar Panwar, an IAS official of AP cadre but hailing from Himachal Pradesh. He was a boxing champion in his college and varsity days, and a sportsman has a different way of looking at things and in his treatment of his junior colleagues (or slaves) as many officials tend to consider their staff.

But here was an IAS official who was very unlike an IAS official much to my shock. I still cannot forget the fulsome praise he launched when the first of the few quarterly newsletters that I brought out was published. Was lucky to have an efficient Design agency to help in the production – design, page makeup – and content, thanks to the inputs that came readily, and sometimes reluctantly, from the colleagues in the department ranging from a youthful 25-something to an aged consultant at +72 years under his belt.

The biggest surprise for me was my ability to hang on to an assignment that required me to do PR, something I suck at very badly, and the shocking thing was that I did it admirably well. Even today I think that it was someone UP THERE who was looking after me and doing my job – given the kind of positive response I got from the media fraternity – all of whom ended up as Business Editors in their own respective media companies, and/or had gone beyond as leading their publications from Hyderabad. None of them took it amiss that I could not physically meet many of them, phone and emails did the trick.

Luckily for me, the odd troublesome media persons were there, but perhaps in a similar mould I took them on, trifle foolishly now I think, but it kind of stunned them into assessing me as someone who could not be badgered into doing something they wanted. Many of them were after advertisements or participation in their media activity (sponsoring the event in some way).

And on this, once again, I must thank Panwar Ji who largely went by professional assessment and okayed most of the proposals that one forwarded after due diligence. This is why, when I simply okayed a proposal from a young marketing person from The Hindu group – for participation in the 125th year celebrations of the organisation – which means an ad costing upwards of a couple of lakhs of rupees – I did not even wait for the young executive to explain what he set out to, about the Hindu and the like. He could not believe that in 10 seconds flat his pitch was okayed, without any questions asked and he was kind of stunned and a trifle zapped. So, he immediately called his boss, the Regional Manager, who kind of remembered vaguely my name as a writer in Frontline magazine.

When I was working with The Hindu as a reporter, I had done a couple of cover stories on Punjab during the height of militancy there that I chanced to cover for the media group I was working in as a reporter in Delhi.

Now, exposure to journalism from the other side is something that every journalist should try and aim to learn, formally or informally, so that their responses to and ability to look at issues from different sides improve.

Or so I think, at least in my case, it surely helped me develop a healthier approach to PR professionals and appreciate their work.

This came in handy when I re-joined Journalism – again Jaipur is central to all this back to the basics game as I headed the desk/production activities of the Rajasthan editions of Hindustan Times. I was lucky to get a chance to relive nostalgia – as by then I was pining for the nicer things that Jaipur had to offer.

If I am earning from editing, writing, and re-writing, it is thanks to all the work I had an opportunity to do in my stint on the desk in Jaipur and then as a news coordinator for the Hindustan Times editions, sitting in the flagship edition of Delhi at its Connaught Place office.

Yet another short stint of some two years was all I was to have – but one that prepared me to do things, that are earning me my bread and butter even six years – I retired from the profession formally in 2018.

And it is once again Jaipur that has given me a chance to interact with the likes of Raghuram Rajan, author, chief editor of Indian Express Raj Kamal Jha, and a host of celebrities ranging from Kareena Kapoor to Goldie Hawn, the Academy Award-winning Hollywood star.

When one was attending the Jaipur Literature Festival earlier this year, an encounter with Raghuram Rajan was one of the most illuminating as he spoke about the “two Indias that lived side by side”. Which somewhat reflected in the outcome of the 2024 Lok Sabha general elections where a clear divide was visible in terms of differences in voting classes when it came to their preferences.

While the rich and the middle and upper middle classes seemed to prefer voting for the BJP, the poor and the downtrodden gave out their clear choice for the INDI Alliance. Of course, the BJP maintained its hold in a few of its strongholds of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and its strong showing in Odisha helped it retain power, albeit with a reduced margin and needing the support of its allies.

(The views are the author’s own, and The News Porter bears no responsibility for the same)

Main/Featured picture on top: Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi with the editor of The NewsPorter, Mehre Alam, in Jaipur earlier this year.