The Price You Pay

by Somnath Batabyal

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Okay. Let me call the input desk.’

  Rajiv dialled the number. ‘Hi, Dilip, I’m coming in. I have Abhishek with me. We can send him to the spot.’

  There was a pause and Abhishek was not sure of the reaction.

  ‘Well, who else? Sonal has gone to cover the hospital fire in Malka Ganj and it will take too long to get her back. I am sure Abhishek can do OBs. He watched me this morning. Keep the car out. We’ll be there in two minutes.’ Rajiv hung up and said, ‘You owe me big-time, Mr Dutta. This is your big break.’

  Safdarjung Airport in south Delhi was not a regular commercial airport and was mostly used in flight training. It also functioned as a hangar for small private aircrafts. By the time Abhishek got there, several television teams had already gathered.

  The moment he stepped out of the car, a cameraman he did not recognize rushed up to him. ‘Boss, shall we go on air? The link is ready. I’ve taken some shots of the aircraft from the bridge. Nothing remarkable though; the fire was already doused,’ he said.

  ‘Hi, I am Abhishek,’ said the new reporter, trying to buy a moment in which to figure out what was going on.

  ‘Yes, Rajiv told me. I am Rupesh. Three other news channels have started their live updates and I am ready to roll.’

  Abhishek’s mobile started to ring. It was Rajiv. ‘Have you reached? I need some information for my voice-over.’

  ‘Give me five minutes, Rajiv. I’ve just arrived.’

  Except for one harried-looking airport official, Abhishek could only see journalists. Despite the cold of the December night, the short, balding man was perspiring under a barrage of lights and questions. Mikes were being thrust into his face as journalists demanded answers in Hindi and English.

  Amid the confusion and shouting, Abhishek gathered that an MiG 24 – the latest version of the Russian combat aircraft that India had been buying for decades, and which crashed with disturbing regularity every three months or so – had failed to take off and had collided with a boundary wall. Seconds before the collision, the pilot had managed to bail out and, though injured, was in no grave danger. The incident had occurred just after 10 p.m. during a routine night exercise.

  The OB van was waiting nearby and a few shots had already been uplinked. Rupesh told Abhishek, ‘Boss, you’d better start now. They’re all waiting. We are behind the other channels.’

  The cameraman and the driver quickly wired him up with an earpiece and lapel mike. Within seconds, and before he could have a chat with Rajiv, Abhishek heard a voice in his earpiece saying they were going live in thirty. Another voice started the countdown: twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven …

  Twenty seconds later, he could hear Rajiv’s voice stating that an MiG 21 had crashed at Safdarjung Airport and they were going live to their reporter at the spot, Abhishek Dutta, for further updates. ‘Not MiG 21 – 24,’ Abhishek thought, his knees shaking as he tried to keep his gaze on the camera lens as instructed. Then he was on air and Rajiv was talking to him. ‘Abhishek, tell us what is going on at the scene. What do you see in front of you?’

  ‘Well, there is not really much going on right now,’ he said nervously. There was a pause and he thought he had been cut off. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Abhishek, yes, we are here.’ Rajiv’s voice came to him again. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ Abhishek replied. ‘First I must tell you that it was an MiG 24 and not an MiG 21, as you just said, that has crashed. It happened around ten p.m. when the plane … it was on a night practice flight … failed to take off from the runway. It crashed into the boundary wall but the pilot managed to eject just before contact.’

  ‘Right. Could you tell us how many people were there in the plane? Were cabin crew and other members inside the aircraft?’

  Abhishek was a bit puzzled by the question. ‘Rajiv, this is a fighter aircraft so there is space only for two people. There were no co-pilots as far as I know and certainly no cabin crew.’

  ‘So there were no casualties?’

  ‘The pilot, I have been told, has suffered some injuries but is in no serious danger.’

  Rajiv signed off.

  It was nearly three in the morning when they were finally allowed onto the airstrip. Orange floodlights cut through the fog, eerily illuminating the damaged plane and the lone fire engine standing empty beside it. The cameramen rushed towards the wall. In the initial excitement Abhishek had forgotten about the chill, but now in the vast empty field his hands felt frozen as he carried the tripod and battery kit.

  Somebody from the input desk called him to ask if there were any developments and Abhishek said no. The person asked him to take a few vox pops. Abhishek, not knowing what that meant, said he would and, hanging up, asked his cameraman.

  ‘Oh, that means getting interviews of eyewitnesses. I don’t think anyone will be around at this time of the night though. It’s freezing and anyway, this is no spectacle.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I think you should call Rajiv and figure it out. Can I borrow a cigarette?’

  Abhishek handed him the packet and, taking shelter under a hangar, called Rajiv.

  ‘Good job,’ the anchor said, coming on the line immediately. ‘Are there any updates or should we keep rolling with the same?’

  Abhishek said that there was not much else to report and no eyewitnesses that he could find.

  Rajiv was kind and gently told him to go home. ‘Look, I know it has been a long day for you; all that boring ratings stuff in the morning and now this. Go home. Take the car. Switch off your phone and sleep a bit. I too am leaving.’

  Rupesh was surprised. ‘Really? Rajiv told you to go home?’

  Abhishek nodded.

  ‘Okay, fine by me. I’ll go and hand in a few fresh shots for the morning bulletin.’

  The driver was asleep and then irritated at being told that he would now have to go to east Delhi. ‘My duty time ends in one hour,’ he grumbled as he started the engine. ‘It will take me at least two hours to get back to the office. I’ve been on duty since morning.’

  Abhishek, initially apologetic, began to doze off, his head bumping against the car window.

  D

  hruv Kapoor, the morning input editor at News Today, was staring incredulously at the story list handed to him by Dilip. ‘But where is the full report of the crash?’

  ‘That’s what I am trying to tell you, Dhruv. The guy just vanished. He never came back to the office.’

  Dhruv did not understand. ‘What do you mean? Where is he?’

  ‘Well, Rajiv tells me he was feeling exhausted and went home,’ Dilip replied. ‘I’ve done the best I could, including a voice-over on the shots that the cameraman got. I also picked up snippets from the wire agencies.’

  ‘He went home to sleep?’ Dhruv could not believe what he was hearing. ‘And we are using wire copies when we had a reporter on the spot? Who hired this idiot?’

  ‘I

  f he doesn’t want to fuck you, there is no urgency. If there is no urgency, our opportunity will not be created. How could you let this situation arise?’ Babloo had arrived late last night at Archana’s flat in Panchsheel and stayed the whole morning. They were just finishing lunch, and she had explained how her relationship with the boy was developing.

  ‘He’s so in love with me, I think he’s even happy to wait for sex,’ she’d laughed.

  Babloo was furious. Just when it mattered most, she was fucking up.

  Archana agreed that things had slipped, but was unwilling to accept all the blame. ‘Had you told me from the beginning how long this would take, I could have planned it better. I thought it would take two weeks; it’s been close to two months.’

  She had been forced to morph from the sexual Monika to the troubled one to prolong the relationship. That Amit Mahajan was overly sensitive and would fall in love with her, instead of simply fantasizing about her, was something they had not considered.


  ‘The parents are back in February. Later than I expected,’ Babloo told her. ‘Do you want to extend the two-week break to a month? That will increase the longing. Call him and say that your father is unwell or something?’

  Archana thought about it. ‘If I lay off for a month, Babloo, he might go completely cold. How about doing what we did with Rustom Modi? Phone calls. Get the fire stoking again and come back at the right time. What do you think?’ she asked, lighting the second of Babloo’s three daily cigarettes.

  A

  bhishek had gone home and straight to bed. Four hours later he was back in the newsroom, trying to explain his disappearance. He’d realized immediately that telling anyone that Rajiv Bose had told him to switch off his phone and go to sleep would make matters worse. He would come across not merely as incompetent, but a simpleton.

  In the canteen, Rajiv came over to him, all smiles and handshakes; not a trace of trickery showed on his face.

  It astonished Abhishek to see how quickly gossip spread. By afternoon, everyone seemed concerned and came up to ask him what had happened. The first two times when he confided, conflated reports spread even faster. Shocked and lonely, he decided to hold his tongue.

  Abhishek needed to understand what had happened, and why. So that evening he went to meet Vivek, who was still recovering from dengue fever.

  ‘You idiot!’ Vivek hooted. ‘You committed the cardinal sin of making an anchor look silly. It was great! I couldn’t sleep so I caught it. Hilarious.’

  Abhishek scowled. He had only wanted to get the facts right.

  ‘Look. The anchor is the face of the channel. He must always look like he knows. The channel’s credibility depends on it. And you, you fool, chose to put down the biggest ego in the business – Mr Rajiv Bose. He’s a prick. What did you expect?’

  Abhishek thought that Vivek looked rather too well, given his illness. As he consumed the excellent single malt – handdelivered, Vivek told him, by his man in Customs – the young reporter tried to tell his senior about the awkwardness; the constant feeling that he did not belong.

  ‘You are not the only one.’ Vivek smiled ruefully. ‘We are the eunuchs here; we fall in neither the Hindi category nor with these privileged English sons of bitches. The Rajiv Boses make us feel inadequate. We do not have their social graces, don’t have their foreign degrees, our fathers are not top bureaucrats. The Hindi journalists see us as part of the English set-up and, therefore, somehow privileged. So where do we go?’ Vivek poured himself another stiff peg. ‘Forget you, I feel like a fucking novice. After eight years of journalism, kids at the desk who have never done shit, never been out on the field, talk back to me. It’s amazing, their level of confidence.’

  But more than his sense of dislocation within the office hierarchy, it was Vivek’s disillusionment that struck Abhishek. ‘Four years with Amir – and he is one cynical bastard – he still made you feel that it was worth it, that it was our fucking duty every bloody morning to get up and go kick someone’s ass. And what’s most important – he made it fun.’

  Abhishek hardly needed telling. He missed Amir sorely. While Abhishek knew his old boss would have laughed at anyone ascribing any higher purpose to journalism, he managed to imbue the workplace with a sense of integrity that made the work fun and worth getting out of bed for.

  ‘The thing about Amir is,’ Vivek added, ‘that you can look up to him. He was the best reporter in town. He earned that respect by doing story after story. Amir understands quality; in television it’s all been reduced to rating. We’re bloody accountants, jumping in the air with a one-point increase and distraught at a fall. This cannot be journalism.’

  Finally Vivek admitted to Abhishek that he had lied to the office about the dengue fever and hospitalization. ‘I was in a remote village in Bihar for six days, tracking men who rig elections. The bulletin producer wanted an early morning update and then ticked me off for appearing unshaved. I told him that where I was, there were no toilets or clean water. “Not my problem,” the motherfucker replied. I came back and got my local doctor to give me a certificate. I needed time to think about what I am doing.’

  ‘Why did you get me into this?’ Abhishek questioned. ‘If you knew this was such bullshit, why did you not tell me?’

  ‘Oh, shut up. I had no clue you were joining. Samir asked about you and I arranged a meeting. You were the hasty one. You should have at least spoken to me, no? Or was the money that irresistible?’

  After leaving Vivek’s place, Abhishek went directly to meet Rahul. On the way, he made up his mind: He would leave television. He would beg Amir to take him back. He would sign a bond, if necessary; enslave himself. Amir would surely understand. From Rahul, he wanted to get a sense of how to approach his former boss. Once he had made the decision, Abhishek felt a surge of relief.

  Rahul met him at the tea shop they used to frequent in the past. Both men hugged.

  ‘Bastard, I haven’t seen you – been more than a month.’

  ‘Sorry, Rahul.’ Abhishek smiled apologetically. ‘Been really, really busy.’

  ‘With the women, I am sure,’ his friend joked.

  Abhishek felt close to tears.

  ‘I just met Vivek,’ he said, taking a long drag of his cigarette. ‘You did? Then you know Vivek is joining us, right? He’s

  coming back to the crime beat. Amir is thrilled.’

  17

  M

  ishra-ji was delighted to see Abhishek. ‘Come in, sir, come in,’ he said, jumping up from his chair and proffering a box of sweets. ‘Here, have some. My son just got engaged.’

  Abhishek took one, and congratulated the friendly figure before him.

  ‘It’s not like the Bengali sweets. You must be used to better. But in Delhi, what can we do?’

  ‘This is delicious, Mishra-ji, thank you. I’ll have another.’

  Abhishek had once asked this apologetic and affable man what he was doing in the police.

  ‘Obviously nothing,’ he had replied. ‘I am a government clerk. Doesn’t matter, police or railways.’

  He now told the reporter that the DCP was busy. ‘But let me go and tell him you are here. Is he expecting you?’

  ‘No. But I can wait, don’t worry.’

  Mishra-ji ordered a cup of tea for Abhishek and, collecting an armful of files, bustled off to inform his boss. Abhishek let himself sink into the waiting-room sofa’s sagging embrace.

  The past four days had exhausted him. He was required to be in office by five each morning and, though the shift was meant to end at one, he was never home until late evening. He complained to the input editor once and was told that if as a television reporter he was clock-watching, he should find something else to do.

  Abhishek had started dreading going to office. He slunk around the newsroom, hoping no one would notice him. But the longer he went unnoticed, the more miserable he became. He had been hired to join the special investigations team, but spent his days writing voice-overs for other people’s stories. He was amazed at the alacrity with which his colleagues kicked him when he was down. The entire office, it seemed, was conspiring against him.

  He sipped the lukewarm sugar syrup masquerading as tea, brought to him by the ever-pleasant canteen boy. Mishra-ji reemerged from Uday’s office. ‘Sir will take half an hour. He really wants to meet you, so don’t go away.’

  Abhishek nodded tiredly. He too wanted to meet Uday Kumar. He was desperate for a story.

  ‘T

  his is dynamite,’ Samir Saxena told Mohan Kapoor, the executive editor.

  Abhishek felt it immediately: the elation of a scoop.

  ‘Yes, but how will we execute the story? I don’t think the police or anyone will give a quote.’ Mohan got straight to practicalities.

  Abhishek had anticipated the question. Or rather, Uday had. For the umpteenth time since meeting him yesterday, Abhishek offered silent thanks to the policeman. Not only had he given Abhishek a cracker of a story, he had also
told him exactly how to do it.

  Of course, the tip-off had been accompanied by the usual Uday theatrics. Abhishek had been called all sorts of names, told that he deserved every bit of shit that he was getting and, if Uday could help it, there would be a whole lot more. It was only after ten minutes of tongue lashing that Uday had asked what he was there for.

  ‘A story, sir. I need a story.’

  ‘Okay, note down,’ the cop had replied, with a grin.

  Ranjana Shetty, the senior additional commissioner of police, ran an NGO for street children called Koshish, Endeavour, which was organizing a Bollywood-themed fund-raiser. Shetty had asked every station house officer of every police station under her jurisdiction to sell tickets to business establishments in their areas. Those who sold the most, Uday explained, would curry the biggest favour with their boss. ‘And in their zeal for approval, the bastards resorted to extortion. Racketeers, the whole lot. Do the story.’

  Seeing Abhishek’s delighted face, Uday had immediately proceeded to deflate him. ‘Any idea how you will do it? Who will give you a quote? You can’t say your newspaper crap about informed sources. What will you do, go to Madam Shetty for a quote?’

  Abhishek, by now familiar with Uday, had waited patiently for the punchline.

  ‘This is how you’ll do it. I’ll arrange for two businessmen in Sarojini Nagar to speak to you. They just coughed up five lakh each and are hurting. Go and meet them now.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Mohan said, once Abhishek had explained. ‘So you’ve the businessmen and they’ve agreed?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then there is no problem. Get their quotes, get shots of the invitation card. Try and meet Ranjana Shetty. If she agrees to meet you, great; if not, no worries. We can get the commissioner to comment and come on as a guest in the evening. Brilliant. This is the headline tonight.’

  ‘Okay, Abhishek, let’s get going. Let’s get the job done.’ Samir smiled at the elated boy beside him.

  The businessmen spoke candidly about how the police had coerced them to pay money for an NGO they had never heard of. The choice they had been offered was simple: Their businesses could earn the goodwill of Madam Shetty, or they could pay later – far more and in worse ways. ‘So much money to go and see Bollywood actresses sing and dance,’ one of them, a restaurant owner, told Abhishek. ‘For that amount, I could sleep with one.’