Devil's Advocate

by Karan Thapar

  The other cricketer whose interview left a deep impression on me is Sachin Tendulkar. This was for Face to Face, recorded in 1999, a year before the Kapil interview and just months after the one with Rahul Dravid.

  Sachin was at the peak of his fame but still a young man, shy and very unused to television. Getting him to agree to the interview was the first problem. My letters to him went unanswered. Any phone numbers I was given turned out to be wrong or the calls were not returned. It was only when I met Mark Mascarenhas, his publicity manager, and discovered that Mark had known Nisha and her parents, that my luck started to turn.

  Mark spoke to Sachin, recommending the interview, and it was fixed in days.

  Thereafter, Vishal Pant spoke at length to Sachin’s wife Anjali and collected a host of delightful anecdotes spanning his entire life. Our intention—as was the case with all Face to Face interviews—was to get Sachin to talk about himself and his life and we believed that this was best done by telling stories.

  Vishal explained to Anjali that this was important for three reasons. First, the audience could easily follow and identify with the stories. Second, most people tend to become animated or dramatic while narrating anecdotes and that enlivens an interview. Finally, if it’s a good story, it’s remembered and retold, giving the interview a further lease of life.

  Anjali understood and promised to prime Sachin. We arrived in Bombay twenty-four hours before the recording. Anjali had suggested that we should drop by that evening to meet Sachin. She felt it would relax him and added that it was important to put him at ease if we wanted to get the best out of him the next day.

  Vishal and I went together and found Sachin and Anjali waiting for us. The two of us must have spent over two hours with the two of them.

  Sachin had several questions and I sensed at once that it was important not just to answer them but also to reassure him that he had fully understood what was required of him the next day. So I shared the questions we had and, more importantly, identified the stories we were looking for in response to each of them. Vishal added that these were things Anjali had told him.

  In several cases, Sachin wanted to tell a different story to the one Anjali had given or tell that one in answer to a different question. In other cases, he had better stories and preferred to go with those. These were not just acceptable changes; I was convinced they would make for a better interview on the grounds that people are always better at telling stories they want to relate rather than those that others want to hear from them.

  Before we left, Sachin asked if we could do a trial run so that he could get the hang of it. We did and it was immediately clear he knew how to tell a story. He’s a raconteur, on top of an ace cricketer.

  The next day, the interview was at the New Oberoi Hotel. Sachin drove himself in a red Mercedes sports car which the hotel permitted him to park smack bang at the entrance.

  I had a twenty-five-minute interview in mind only to discover that overnight, Sachin had thought of many additional anecdotes for several of the questions. He now had a cornucopia of stories to share. So the interview continued for just under an hour.

  I decided not to curb or restrain him because I felt we might lose out on a story we had never heard before and which could be better than the one we were expecting. And, certainly, Sachin told them with gusto and enjoyment. A broad smile covered his face right through the recording and his eyes were shining. He was definitely enjoying himself.

  Vishal and I left Mumbai delighted. We knew we had a stunning interview on tape. The only problem was reducing it to twenty-five minutes. That wasn’t going to be easy because we wanted to keep every answer and it was impossible to decide which ones to drop.

  Eventually—as had to happen—the job got done and the interview was reduced to the requisite time. But I still feel that what got left out was at least as good as what we retained. I’m confident Vishal would not disagree. If only the BBC had let us make a two-part episode rather than insist on sticking to one!

  13

  A HOP, SKIP AND JUMP—AND A BOMB BLAST

  M

  y years with Eyewitness ended in 1997. What followed was an interesting hop, skip and jump between different jobs before I formed my company Infotainment Television Private Limited with my old school friend Analjit Singh as my sleeping business partner.

  The first hop, so to speak, was a year with Markand Adhikari’s Sri Adhikari Brothers. I skipped out of there within a brief year and jumped at an opportunity to join Ronnie Screwvala’s United Television (UTV).

  It was during my three years at UTV that most of the programmes that I came to be identified with began or started to attract attention. The list includes HARDtalk India and Face to Face for the BBC, We The People for Star TV (incidentally, Barkha Dutt ‘stole’ that title after we finished this particular series) as well as Line of Fire and Court Martial for SAB TV. To be honest, the last two programmes started while I was with Markand Adhikari but reached their acme after I left him.

  The famous Kapil Dev interview when he cried like a baby happened whilst I was with Ronnie’s company. Another memorable one during my time there was with General Pervez Musharraf. It achieved an extraordinary level of attention, both because of its content and timing.

  The Musharraf interview happened just four months after the coup of 1997 when the general dismissed the Nawaz Sharif government and took charge himself. More importantly, it was just weeks after the hijack of IC-814, known popularly as the Kandahar hijack. An Indian aeroplane travelling from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked by terrorists and flown to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and forcibly held there. To end the ensuing hostage crisis, the Indian government was forced to release three Pakistani terrorists in its custody who were taken to Kandahar by then external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh.

  ‘I want to interview Gen. Musharraf,’ I said to Ashraf Qazi one morning. ‘He could be a very badly misunderstood man and, therefore, it would surely be in his interest to speak directly to the Indian people and let them see and judge him for what he really is. Don’t you agree?’

  Ashraf didn’t completely fall for this gambit; he was too astute for that. However, he could see the utility of an interview with a military dictator that might help improve the latter’s image, particularly just after the Kandahar hijack.

  It was in early February while I was on a visit to Mumbai that Ashraf rang to say that the interview had been fixed. ‘You have to leave on Friday. The interview is on Saturday. Fortunately, there is a flight that day to Lahore with an easy connection to Islamabad.’

  This was good news, but the problem was that it was already Wednesday. Gen. Musharraf was giving me just forty-eight hours’ notice to research, prepare and travel.

  ‘Karan,’ Ashraf replied, when I complained about the shortage of time, ‘you wanted an interview and you’ve got it. You’re the first Indian to be given this opportunity. Grab it now or you’ll lose it forever.’

  I didn’t need further convincing. I knew this was an opportunity I couldn’t let slip out of my grasp.

  Expectedly, it was a quarrelsome, even aggressive interview. After the hijack, Musharraf wasn’t popular in India. More importantly, as a journalist from the world’s largest democracy, I could hardly be soft on a military dictator who had overthrown Pakistan’s most recent attempt at civilian government. Finally, to ensure that Doordarshan would show the finished product—and that was one of the paradoxes of this interview; it was to be shown on India’s national television and not on a private channel—it had to be tough. Any weakness on my part would have ensured Doordarshan would refuse to broadcast it.

  So, as an Indian interviewer, my first objective was to get him to accept that he was a military dictator and that his claim to be restoring democracy was codswallop. The other was to talk to him about how his actions—or lack of them—were the real problem in Indo-Pakistan relations.

  As you can imagine, this was not the sort of task that would endear an interviewer to the
interviewee and I must admit there was a certain apprehension in my heart. I wasn’t scared or worried, but I felt that things might not go well. After all, you can’t sit in a man’s drawing room and call him a tanashah, a dictator, to his face and not annoy or, at least, upset him. When that would inevitably happen, the atmosphere, equally inexorably, would turn frosty.

  Well, I did my bit. I called the general a dictator. I told him that in Indian eyes, his sincerity and credibility were utterly suspect and I claimed to have discovered the contradictions that bedevilled him. He was an army chief who had overthrown an elected prime minister in the name of democracy, yet wanted his protestations to be taken at face value even though he was not prepared to do very much to prove his credentials. As I put it to him, what could be more bizarre than that?

  The general simply smiled. In fact, it wasn’t long before I noticed that he was unperturbed. Of course, he defended himself, always fluently, often ably and even nodded in agreement with some of the comments I made. By taking my criticism on the chin and showing no anger, he cleverly defused the situation.

  During the commercial break, instinctively feeling that I needed to make small talk to keep our communication going, I complimented the general on his tie. I hadn’t expected any response, leave aside the one I got.

  ‘Do you really like it?’ he asked, a smile lighting up his face and his voice revealing the same innocent pleasure that you or I feel when someone admires our clothes.

  ‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘It’s very attractive.’

  Then the interview restarted. The second half was about Kashmir, which means the disagreements were sharper and the potential for acrimony greater. Half an hour later, when it ended, the tie was the last thing on my mind. My thoughts were on making a polite but fast getaway.

  ‘I’d like you to have this,’ General Musharraf suddenly said, undoing his tie. ‘Please let me give it to you.’

  ‘Sir, sir, sir,’ I stammered. ‘That was only an innocent remark. I wasn’t hinting or anything.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. ‘It’s my gesture of conciliation to you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, still shaken. Then, looking at the gold tiepin and chain now idly dangling on his shirt, I added with a laugh, ‘I should have admired the gold chain. Maybe you would have given that to me as well.’

  The general roared.

  ‘Haan,’ he said. ‘Aur agar aap ko jootein pasand aayi ho toh woh bhi mil jaatein (And if you liked my shoes you would have got those as well)!’

  In a flash the tension evaporated and the mood was full of bonhomie. The spontaneous gesture of gifting his tie had brought about a sea change. I wasn’t the only person who felt it. My colleagues who had come with me were equally aware of the altered atmosphere and the fact that General Musharraf deserved credit for it. Their verdict said it all: ‘Banda sahi hai. Bura nahin. Dil ka saaf hai (He’s not bad. A good-hearted man).’

  There’s one little story left to tell. It’s about how Doordarshan was persuaded to telecast the interview. After Kargil and the Kandahar hijack, Musharraf was not a man Doordarshan wanted to promote. Yet, he was undoubtedly in the news and also controversial. So when I had approached the channel’s chief executive officer prior to the interview, he agreed to show it in principle, provided the content justified a Doordarshan broadcast. That was the catch.

  My next step was to contact Brajesh Mishra, who at the time was Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s principal secretary and national security adviser. I asked if I could get an off-the-record briefing before the interview. He agreed and when I turned up I took along the questions I intended to put to General Musharraf. I wanted Mishra to approve them. If he did, that would be the first indication that I was on the right lines. It would also greatly help with Doordarshan.

  Fortunately, Mishra liked what he saw. More unexpectedly, he also took to me. He asked me to get in touch as soon as I was back and offered to ensure that Doordarshan would broadcast the interview, provided I stuck to the questions I had shown him.

  ‘No one can predict what Musharraf will say and I doubt if he’s going to crumble in front of you,’ he said. ‘But if the questions are tough and asked with determination, it will show an Indian audience that this Pakistani dictator has been properly questioned. That’s the sort of message this government would be happy with.’

  Mishra liked the final interview when he saw an advance video copy of it. He also loved the stories I had come back with.

  ‘Now we’ve got to be clever about this,’ he said. ‘You’re going to face a lot of opposition and we have to tackle it before it hits us.’

  I thought I understood what Mishra was saying but wasn’t certain, so I kept quiet. Anyway, he had not finished.

  ‘You’re saying that Doordarshan plans to show it in three or four days’ time, provided they get the necessary clearance from the government. Is that right?’ he continued.

  ‘Yes. But that clearance is the problem. Can you help me?’

  ‘Well, the first thing to do,’ Mishra said, ‘is to get one or two papers to publish that Doordarshan will air this interview on whatever the target date is. Do you have an editor who is a friend who can arrange this?’

  It didn’t take me long to work out that Mishra’s intention was to force the government’s hand. Once it became widely known that Doordarshan intended to broadcast an interview with Gen. Musharraf, it would be that much more difficult to deny clearance. In those circumstances doing so would seem like censorship.

  My recourse was to contact M.K. Razdan, then editor-in-chief of the Press Trust of India (PTI) and a good and supportive friend. During my Eyewitness years PTI, under his direction, had done more than anyone else to publicize our stories and help our programme establish its name.

  I decided to level with Razdan and tell him the truth. Experienced journalist that he is, he laughed. He knew at once that this was a game that journalists and sometimes even politicians play. PTI immediately put out a little story that Doodarshan would carry an exclusive one-hour interview with Gen. Musharraf which, luckily, a couple of papers picked up the next day. One of them, if I recall correctly, was The Indian Express. It carried the article on the front page.

  However, I still hadn’t got the necessary clearance for broadcast. As the last few days rolled by, we were left with just hours before the scheduled telecast. If the clearance didn’t happen by then, Mishra’s tactics could actually leave us considerably embarrassed because now we would have to explain both why the interview wasn’t broadcast and how the news about it had been leaked. So, instead of forcing the government’s hand, we would end up incurring its wrath.

  If my memory is correct, the broadcast was scheduled for 8 p.m. In the meantime, the interview had been seen by the army chief as well as External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. But I had no idea whether they approved or disapproved of it.

  I kept trying to ring Brajesh Mishra but was unable to get through. His secretary was like a wall that I couldn’t get past. I left several messages but got no response.

  By 6 p.m. I was convinced that in this instance, no news was bad news. Then suddenly, the phone rang. It was Brajesh Mishra. He was clearly chuckling. I could tell he was in a good mood.

  ‘What time is your interview scheduled for broadcast?’ he began. But he didn’t wait for my answer. ‘If it’s still 8 o’clock, that gives me enough time to get home and watch it with a drink. So I just thought I would ring and confirm that nothing has changed.’

  This was Mishra’s way of saying that he had got the clearance and the interview was on. He was fond of passing on messages in this elliptical fashion. I also thought he was rather pleased he had kept me in tension right to the bitter end.

  Years later, when I got to know him well and we would dine with each other, he told me that Jaswant Singh had been against the telecast. In fact, Jaswant directly rang Prime Minister Vajpayee to say so. Mishra saw this as a bit of a challenge and made a special effort to persuade Vajpayee that Jaswant’s
advice was mistaken. I suspect the rivalry between Mishra and Jaswant made certain that the former tried every means to ensure that the interview he was backing was shown. Perhaps if Jaswant had not made his opposition so obviously known, Mishra’s exertions on my behalf would have been a lot less!

  In the years that followed the Musharraf interview, I did several more with the general. In fact, a two-part interview with him launched Devil’s Advocate in 2006. The astonishing thing is, though he was a dictator and now wants to be seen as a democrat, he has never hesitated to answer difficult questions and even seems to enjoy tackling them. Handling the media is definitely one of his strengths. Some of his civilian successors could learn from him.

  The other memorable incident from these years—if memorable is the appropriate word—was that I was one of the victims of a Tamil Tiger terrorist bomb attack in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It happened more than twenty years ago on 15 October 1997. Not surprisingly, my memory of the full story is weak, if not also inaccurate. Yet, the trauma of the experience and the injuries it left behind are still very much with me.

  The only way I can relate what happened is to delve back into the piece I wrote for the Hindustan Times on my return. Called ‘A Miraculous Escape’, it recounts the details of what happened although, like any column, it’s a touch embellished. Here’s an updated version of the story I told then:

  Like any other journalist I’m always on the lookout for a good story. The problem comes when instead of being the sutradhar, you end up the subject. Suddenly, your emotions get entangled with the chronology and no detail seems too small or insignificant to leave out. No wonder journos who write about themselves end up [becoming] crashing bores.