Devil's Advocate

by Karan Thapar

  Thereafter, relations did not just cool, they snapped and ended. If we met at some public venue, he would smile and shake hands, Pratibha would embrace me, but it was no longer the same.

  It took me a while to realize that I’d made a mistake. That in my folly I had lost a valuable relationship. But when I did come around to accept the fact and try to make up for it, I discovered it was too late. I asked to meet Advani several times and he would always politely hear me out. He’d offer tea and we would talk of other things but the curtain that had dropped refused to rise again.

  Three years later, in 2009, as the campaign for the national election got underway with Advani as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Pratibha arranged a long interview with her father, once again for Devil’s Advocate. The excuse was that this was intended as the first of a series with top politicians in the run-up to voting but, more importantly, it was an attempt to build bridges and wipe out the past.

  I planned a two-part interview. Part two would be about the policies that an Advani government might follow in terms of domestic issues as well as foreign affairs. I knew he would be happy to talk about this. Part one, however, was about the problems he would face getting elected and, more awkwardly, the behaviour and comments of some of his BJP colleagues which had attracted adverse attention.

  I should have recorded the interview in reverse order. Part two first, because that would have relaxed him and removed the apprehensions that were still lurking in his mind. After that, it would be easier to raise the awkward questions contained in part one. But I only realized this after beginning the interview in proper chronological order and by then it was too late.

  Ten minutes into part one, Advani got up and left. I had not said anything to upset him and the issues I’d raised and questions I’d asked would have been unexceptional if voiced by someone else. From me, however, they brought back fears that I might repeat 2006 again. I believe this was the concern that made him get up and end the interview.

  This time both Mrs Advani and Pratibha said I had done no wrong. They tried to convince Advani to return and continue. But it didn’t work.

  I was left with ten minutes of an unfinished interview and it was never aired. In desperation, I rang up Arun Jaitley who agreed to fill the breach. But my relationship with Advani and his family was clearly over.

  Since 2009, I have seen very little of the Advanis. He did, however, agree to an interview in 2015 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Emergency. Nothing went wrong on this occasion but it wasn’t an exciting interview either.

  Later in 2015, Advani and Pratibha accepted an invitation from my sisters to attend a garden reception they were hosting at the Gymkhana Club for my sixtieth birthday. The moment they told me they had invited him I knew he would come. This is the sort of courtesy and gesture he considers important and always fulfills. And when he came, he was warm and gracious. But that was the politeness of a gentleman.

  Now the older I get, the more aware I become that I made a terrible mistake and paid for it by losing Advani’s friendship. But you can’t undo what’s done. Once paths diverge, they go in different directions. Hereafter, that’s the way it will be.

  11

  THREE STORIES ABOUT PRANAB MUKHERJEE

  I

  lost touch with Pranab Mukherjee after he became president of India in 2012. After all, a journalist can’t go knocking on the doors of Rashtrapati Bhavan and expect to be let in, or pick up the phone and natter with its exalted occupant. But in the decades before that, I felt I had established a relationship which revealed some of his remarkable qualities.

  Pranab Mukherjee can get angry quickly, but he’s faster to forget and forgive. During an interview in 2004, for the BBC programme HARDtalk India, recorded at Jamia Millia Islamia University, when I began by repeatedly and forcefully questioning his decision as defence minister to promote to lieutenant general a man who had been rejected on three separate occasions by an army board and suggested this was politicization of the army, he was visibly riled. When I then questioned if he had done this because the officer concerned was related to a senior Congress leader, his face became incandescent. I could see his veins throbbing. Finally, when I said that this contradicted Dr Manmohan Singh’s pledge to ‘recapture the spirit of idealism’ and his ‘commitment to decency (and) morality’, Mr Mukherjee’s fury made me fear he might walk out.

  He didn’t. Instead, we changed the subject and carried on talking for another twenty minutes. When the interview ended, I apologized for annoying him. His response took me completely by surprise.

  He threw back his head and laughed. His eyes were twinkling and I could see that this wasn’t put on. ‘You were doing your job and I was doing mine,’ he said. ‘I’ve known you long enough, Korron (as he fondly mispronounces my name), to realize that your bark is worse than your bite.’

  Then, with his hand on my shoulder, we walked down Jamia’s long corridors to his waiting car. He wanted everyone to know that he wasn’t upset. More importantly, he didn’t ask for any cuts.

  Years earlier in 1995, when his unwarranted ‘banishment’ from high politics had ended and he was Narasimha Rao’s foreign minister, I had met him for an off-the-record briefing prior to an interview for Eyewitness with Benazir Bhutto who was, at the time, Pakistan’s prime minister.

  ‘You know what to ask, Korron,’ he said, brushing aside my reason for calling on him. ‘I would like you to take a message to her.’

  In turn, she gave me one for him and I thus got a second opportunity to meet him. This proved very useful because Salman Haidar, then India’s foreign secretary, refused to clear the interview with Benazir for broadcast by Doordarshan. In those days that was a huge stumbling block.

  ‘Hmmm…’ Mr Mukherjee responded when I told him how the interview was stuck. ‘I don’t want to embarrass the FS by overruling him. Why don’t you give it to a private channel and I’ll ensure there is no further obstacle?’

  That’s exactly what I did. BiTV telecast the interview and Vir Sanghvi held a series of discussions about its content. It ended up garnering more attention than it would have on Doordarshan.

  My last story involving Pranab Mukherjee is to do with the 26/11 attacks that happened in Mumbai in 2008. Mr Mukherjee was, once again, external affairs minister. At the time, on 28 November, someone had made a hoax call to Pakistan President Asif Zardari, claiming to be Pranab Mukherjee, and got through. This caller, it was said, had threatened Zardari. The Pakistanis raised the matter with Washington and Condoleezza Rice, then US secretary of state, telephoned Mr Mukherjee for clarification in the middle of the night.

  On 29 November, the day 26/11 ended, Asif Zardari gave me an interview. A few hours later, when I rang to thank him, he gave me a message for Mr Mukherjee. ‘Tell him not to threaten me in future. This is not the way a foreign minister should behave.’ It took me a while to contact Mr Mukherjee and he heard me out in silence. When I finished, he made me repeat the story a second time. ‘Thank you, Korron,’ he said, but I sensed the episode wasn’t over.

  Hours later Satyabrata Pal, then our high commissioner to Pakistan, rang with a full explanation and details to prove that the call that had upset Zardari was a hoax. I was asked to pass this on to the Pakistan president. I can’t say that Asif was convinced, but he was prepared to consider the matter closed. ‘Forget it,’ he said and laughed. ‘There are more important things happening in the world. Give Mr Mukherjee my regards and make sure you tell him I’m a good guy.’ When I did, Pranab Mukherjee simply giggled.

  Mr Mukherjee is a good-hearted man who bears no ill will. He’s a wise politician who can help a journalist without embarrassing a civil servant who has erred. Finally, he can handle awkward situations with deft discretion and no one will ever know how he did it. He’s also always in firm control of what he’s saying. I’ve never known him to be indiscreet, unless it is deliberately so. He gives you the feeling that not just his life, but possibly every minute of it, is carefull
y planned or, at least, well considered and easily accounted for.

  12

  WHEN I MADE KAPIL CRY AND SACHIN TALK

  U

  nlike practically every other Indian, I’m not enthusiastic about cricket. In fact, it bores me. So, not surprisingly, I’m also ignorant of the finer points of the game. The wonderful names for placement on a cricket field mean nothing to me. I can’t identify a crafty spin from a fast-ball attack or a cover drive from a cross-bat shot.

  My lack of knowledge of and utter disinterest in the game used to make Mummy distraught. She was an enthusiastic cricket fan and particularly fond of the West Indies XI. When a Test match was on, she could spend all five days in front of the TV fortified by her cigarettes and frequent cups of coffee.

  It wasn’t so much my inability to play the game that she found difficult to accept as my indifference to it. ‘There’s something definitely wrong with you,’ she would say and shoo me out of the room so that she could watch undistracted by my foolish comments.

  Yet the paradox is that I’ve done multiple interviews with cricketers and they’ve often turned out to be rather watchable. This is despite that fact that my first one for Face to Face, with Rahul Dravid, just after the cricket World Cup in 1999 where he was the highest run-getter, was perhaps the worst start anyone could have. The research I had been given showed that Rahul had failed to score a century by just five runs during his debut in 1996. My producer at the BBC, Vishal Pant, suggested that I should begin by asking what that felt like. Of course I agreed.

  ‘Let’s start with your debut,’ I began. ‘What did it feel like to miss a century in your first Test by just five wickets?’

  ‘Five runs!!!’ Rahul roared back, laughing loudly. At the time I had no idea how foolish I seemed, but that became unavoidably apparent when the interview went on air and the world discovered that I knew nothing of the game.

  However, it’s the interview with Kapil Dev in 2000 that made headlines across the cricketing world. It’s an interesting story—and one I’m keen to tell—but if I begin with it, I’ll convey a misleading impression of Kapil. So let me go back in time to the days when I was a young journalist with LWT.

  I first met Kapil Dev in 1983. It was the morning after the World Cup victory. The shock and the surprise had not yet dissipated. The joy and euphoria were only just setting in. The cricketing world was in a trance. Our winning team was on cloud nine.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said as I followed him down the hotel corridor, asking for an interview. He was surrounded by interview-seeking journalists. I must have been one of fifty. His answer to each was similarly encouraging and reassuring.

  I wasn’t convinced that he meant it. Perhaps he was being polite or maybe he was trying to get rid of us. So I started telephoning to reconfirm. I rang the hotel, his room, the lobby, the dining room, his alleged friends. You name the number, I must have called it. Eventually, well past midnight, I got through.

  ‘Haan yaar,’ he cheerfully replied. ‘It’s tomorrow morning at 9, but why don’t you let me get some sleep before that!’

  Kapil was on time and brought his vice-captain, Mohinder Amarnath, as well. They were sleepy, perhaps a little hungover, but happiness infused the interview. It was the first I handled as an associate producer at LWT. It wasn’t faultless but it was memorable.

  It was this easy helpfulness that struck me about Kapil. Stars can be prima donnas and often reluctant to assist lowly mortals. Not Kapil. In March 2000, when I was making programmes for the BBC, I encountered the same quality again. We were scheduled to interview Sourav Ganguly. It was the day before the Faridabad One-day game with South Africa. Sourav had agreed, the time had been fixed but he was running late. The clock was ticking and I was beginning to fear the interview might not happen. With stars, silly accidents sometimes disrupt the best-laid plans. Just then I got a call.

  ‘Hi Karan,’ a voice crackled over my mobile phone. ‘Main Kapil Dev bol raha hoon (This is Kapil Dev.)’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ I replied, stunned and somewhat speechless. Why was he ringing me?

  ‘Suno, Sourav is with me and if you want your interview, pick him up from my office in the next ten minutes.’

  When I got there, a beaming Kapil had Sourav ready, dressed and waiting. The look on my face must have suggested that I was perplexed. How had Kapil swung this? How did he even know about the proposed interview?

  ‘I heard your conversation with Sourav on the mobile and realized you were panicky and I decided that this was the only way to do it,’ he explained. ‘Had Sourav returned to the hotel to change, you would never have got him.’

  So Kapil took him to his office and made him shower, shave and dress there. The interview that followed was a gem but few people outside my circle of colleagues realized that Kapil had pulled it off.

  And now to the interview that took the world by surprise. The paradox is that it happened almost by accident. At the time, Kapil was the highest wicket-taker in the world and, of course, had been the captain of India’s World Cup-winning team. I called on Kapil on Thursday, 4 May 2000, to ask for an interview.

  The BBC had asked us to do a series of Face to Face interviews with great cricketers of the present and legends of the past. These were to be personality pieces—soft, gentle, anecdotal. Kapil wasn’t very keen. Just days before I met him, Tehelka had published allegations suggesting that Kapil had accepted Rs 25 lakh to throw a cricket game. The story had been picked up widely and everyone was talking about it. It was clearly on his mind. So the invitation to do a soft feature interview did not excite him. Yet, the idea of doing one for the BBC was something he warmed to.

  ‘Suno yaar,’ he said, as he poured me a cup of tea. ‘Let’s do a proper one. You ask what you want and let me answer the way I think I should.’

  It took me a few seconds to realize what Kapil was proposing. He was agreeing to be interviewed, but not for a gentle personality series. He wanted to be on the tougher HARDtalk India, to face the most difficult questions possible on the charges he was accused of. He was, in fact, giving me a scoop.

  ‘When?’ I asked tentatively, apprehensive that fixing a date might clip the soaring hopes he had just created.

  ‘Tomorrow? Day after? The sooner the better.’

  The recording was fixed for midday the following Saturday. Kapil arrived wearing shorts, although he had brought a jacket and formal shirt to wear on top. He thought he would be visible only from the waist upwards, so this was all he would need. But the interview contained a couple of wide shots where his hairy legs are clearly visible.

  From start to finish, the interview was about the allegations he faced. For the first ten minutes he took my questions squarely on the chin. He seemed unruffled and undisturbed. But when I asked if he was worried about the fact that history might remember him not just as the captain of India’s World Cup-winning cricket team or the highest wicket-taker, but also as someone accused of accepting money to throw a match, a dam inside seemed to burst and his emotions poured out in a flood of tears.

  It happened so suddenly, it took me aback. Tears rolled down his cheeks, his voice began to quiver and then actually broke. His nose started to run. In fact, he was crying like a baby.

  Watching Kapil, I knew I had a moment of television magic on my hands. Years earlier, I had been told that the two most gripping things on TV are children laughing ecstatically and adults unable to control their tears.

  I know it sounds heartless, but the first thought that came to my mind was that the interview still had fifteen minutes to run and it would be an anticlimax if Kapil’s tears were to dry up and his manner return to normal. I instinctively felt I had to ensure that he continued to cry till the end. Yet I was also aware that if I played with his emotions and asked questions which would prompt further tears it would look and feel terribly wrong. I would lose the audience and ruin the interview. So I dropped my voice to sound concerned and sympathetic, but continued to ask tough questions. I cont
inued to probe the allegations and question his answers as well as their veracity.

  This worked. Kapil’s tears flowed relentlessly.

  Looking back, I’m not proud of what I did. But I’m not embarrassed either. I had a job to do at the time, and it was to get the best interview. If this meant prolonging Kapil’s tears, so be it.

  I knew the interview would attract attention but I had no idea what that would actually amount to. The BBC had hired a marketing agency and one of their staff, Sunil Kalra, was in the production box watching the recording. So he was aware of what had happened and the first thing he did was to offer an exclusive with pictures of a crying Kapil to the Hindustan Times. The next day, Sunday, was the paper’s day of biggest circulation. Its front page was emblazoned with four pictures of Kapil in tears. The story underneath provided details of what had happened.

  The interview had still not been broadcast—and would not be for a further week—but it had already made front-page headlines. It wasn’t long before the BBC itself picked up excerpts to run in their news. All the other Indian papers ran stories of their own. Outlook magazine made it a cover story. They took a screenshot from the interview, which shows Kapil crying and rubbing his right eye with his right hand in a futile effort to stop his tears. His face is not just distraught, it suggests a man having a complete emotional breakdown.

  The night the interview was broadcast, I must have received a hundred calls asking the same question: Were Kapil’s tears real? Or was it dramebaazi, to use the colloquial Hindi expression?

  Let me start by assuming that the emotion was put on. Theoretically it could have been, but then Kapil would have to be an actor—not a simple Bollywood product but one of Shakespearean proportions. To cry as he did on demand is not easy. Most of our actors cannot or, at least, not convincingly.

  That leads me inexorably to the conclusion that the tears were genuine and the emotion real. I interpret them as the cry of an anguished soul, expressing both pain and helplessness. If I were in his position, it’s possible I would behave similarly too. But were they also tears of remorse? I don’t think so, but of course, they could have been.