SOTTO VOCE: The Premonition

He didn't know me. I knew him. Too well, it seems. Otherwise, why would one remember him all of a sudden the day he left? Around noon that day, a procession of headlines crossed my mind: Balkanisation of India; Kya Hua, Mr Hua; Head-hunters stalk Bihar. I googled him and found images of the dapper editor one saw as a crusader. The same evening, a wire-service item struck me like a bolt: Veteran journalist R K Karanjia dead.I made Karanjia's acquaintance like most people did: through Blitz. Week after week, in the 1970s, his 'Free, frank and fearless' tabloid would make an appearance in our home.
And would be devoured from beginning to end. The back page would be read discreetly because of the babe there, alongside K A Abbas's column. One of the pin-ups was actress Shoma Anand, with the caption: 'SHO-MORE'. Blitz's list of loves was long: Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, Egypt's Nasser, Yugoslavia's Tito, Non-Aligned Movement, Friends of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro, et al. His friendship with the Shah of Iran, a staunch US ally, and Rajni Patel, the uncrowned king of Bombay, was a paradox.
Few could hunt somebody down as well as Karanjia did. The Congress Syndicate, China and Subramanian Swamy ('the Chinese pro-fusser') were his favourite punching bags. Much scorn was poured upon the prime minister of the day, an unabashed advocate of urine therapy and prohibition. Soon after Ronald Reagan became US president, Blitz greeted him with a lead story headlined RE-GUN. He knew where it hurt most. Blitz asked, and answered, inconvenient questions in 'I Don't Know Son'. It told the story behind Congress veteran Y B Chavan patching up with Indira Gandhi. The headline was 'Callaghan shoves Chavan into Cong'; the report spoke of British PM James Callaghan goading Chavan to return to Mrs Gandhi's party to check the Janata Party. Such stuff made me wonder why the other papers never had it. People would condemn Karanjia's brand of 'yellow journalism', yet say, "Didn't I tell you? It's there in Blitz". The 1990s saw Karanjia supporting the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and turning to godmen. The somersault left his admirers dumbfounded. We missed the Blitz of old; it had passed on. I miss the man who got me interested in journalism, nay, brought me into it.