people i work with: part one

Name of the dude I worked with: Ashok Hegde
Profession: Journalist, Editor, word game-lover, Internet enthusiast, occasional nuisance.
Appearance: Sloppy on birthdays (his own). Shoddy on other days.
Identifying features: Fairly large moustache, uncombed hair, conspicuous Nike shoes bought for a staggering Rs 4,500 (“I had a gift coupon,” he explains).
Likes: Well-edited copy, Ghulam Ali, colleague Zaki Ansari and wife Neema. Possibly in that order.
Most likely to say: “This idea sucks”; “Drop this”; “Amaaaaaaaaaaazingggggg!”; “Chal fut le…”
Least likely to say: “I love your work”; “I think you’re extremely talented”; “Nice tie”; “Got the latest Metallica album?”

It started out innocently enough, with a question. “Can I work with you, Ashok,” I asked. I was 19 and (thanks to a system of education that insists you learn your dates by rote, while forgetting to teach you the difference between right and wrong) very naïve. “Hire me,” I repeated. “You won’t be sorry.”

The job in question was that of a sub-editor, assisting the aforementioned Ashok Hegde at a media firm. “Soon, I’ll be hanging out with the guys at the top,” I told my friends. “Soon, it’s going to be me with India’s biggest politicians, cops, movers and shakers,” I added, for emphasis. “Soon, I’ll know what true journalism is all about.”

Ashok smiled at me and said, “Okay.” And that is how, with my own hands, my fate was sealed.

Cut to scene two, two weeks later. I sat quietly, behind Ashok. He was at my PC, shaking his wrists every now and then, his gold watch glinting in the light, reading some copy I had been editing for over an hour. Two minutes into this exercise, it was all gone. My hard-won-and-much thought-over text was replaced by his version of the truth. “This is how you edit,” he said. “You’ll learn.”

I smiled graciously. “Thank you so much for taking time out to show me,” I told him. “Anytime,” he replied. He wasn’t into sarcasm in a big way.

That was almost seven years ago. I continued working with Ashok, primarily on account of my penchant for punishment. I did learn a lot though. About what a good feature is; how a story angle makes all the difference; why an interesting headline is important; what re-writing a feature is all about; how a little bit of tact can go a long way; how to be sweet at all hours, even with people you hate; how to stay calm, no matter what. Things like that.

What, then, can I say about Ashok Hegde, after all these years of working in close proximity with him? (I use the word ‘close’ in a very literal sense. Our chairs often lay a mere two feet apart. Believe all they tell you about the space crunch in Mumbai).

For a start, Ashok is passionate about his work. If he’s not, he’s been a bloody good actor. He’s the one who scans the Internet for hours (half of which are spent playing Scrabble with unsuspecting college students from around the world, but that’s another tale), in search of the perfect story. He’s the one who fires off email after email, to one employee after another, keeping them updated on anything and everything related to their areas of interest. Responsible for a Web site’s exhaustive page on America’s war on terror, he’s the one who is sometimes (I suspect) a lot more enthusiastic about happenings in Afghanistan than Osama bin Laden himself.

More gossip. Ashok will do anything – an emphasis on ‘anything’ here -- for a good, well-written story: hound journalists, call them incessantly, cajole them for more quotes, think long and hard about how a bad feature can be re-written and, on some painful occasions, threaten to beat them with his slippers (his idea of comfortable, corporate wear).

I haven’t worked with Ashok for a while now. Which is sad, because I miss his brand of criticism. A no-mincing-words, no-beating-around-the-bush sort of criticism. I miss listening to him laugh at jokes that make sense to him alone. I miss him trying, enthusiastically, and failing miserably, to make me take my life and career more seriously. I miss his ability to never take anything I say at face value. Most importantly, I miss the fact that he has always been more of a friend than a boss. As opposed to more of the bosses than friends I have had to work with since.

coming soon, ‘people i work with: part two’:
The mouth with feet -- Zaki Ansari.