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Photo: H. Vibhu

Experience V. P. Ramachandran

He was asked to wait while his job was done. That was in the late fifties, he says, when he was posted there as the correspondent, and bursts out laughing. A healthy 84-years-old, the one-time teleprinter operator of PTI later sat proudly on the director board of the same organisation.

“I strayed into journalism actually. After matriculation, I learnt typewriting and went to my brother who was in Pune, in 1943. Working as a clerk in the Army was boring. The API correspondent lived opposite our house. When Kasturba Gandhi fell ill, he was rushing off to report it on his cycle when he fell down. I helped him up. It was he who offered me a job in API, which later became PTI. I went to Mumbai, Kanpur, and also Assam, where always, there was disruption of power. So we had to send the news items through messengers to Assam Tribunal and Assamiya (Assamese newspaper). But after dusk, nobody would go because there would be tigers around!”

VPR (as he is called by the media fraternity) sees a lot of changes in the manner news is reported. “In the early days there was not even an intro. The statements of top politicians were given and that made news. After the war and Independence, when news was scarce, came the human interest stories. In our days, even if we got a scoop, if it was detrimental to the country, we refrained from reporting it,” he said. VPR got a chance to cover Gandhiji’s prayer meeting just once, “because seniors were not available”.

Of his six years as correspondent in Lahore, he has many memories. When martial law was declared, in Yahya Khan’s days, there was no way he could get the message across to India. But sending a Pakistani newspaper to India was allowed. So, he took a copy, edited the published story in the newspaper and sent it through a pilot at the airport, breaking the news in India.

Covering the Indo-Chinese war is an experience he will never forget. How he missed his scoop still pains him. He was in PTI. “We had to wear uniforms and lived in the villages on the border. We were taken to Se La and shown how impregnable it was. We returned to the base camp and the next day, I saw grim faces at the breakfast table. I learnt from a top official that Bomdila fell instead, a totally unexpected turn of events. I quickly filed the report, through the army, of course, and listened to BBC news eagerly to hear my scoop. In the evening, I told my friend V. M. Nair about it. He was in Reuters. The next day, his report came! I was devastated. It turned out that the army was waiting for Nehru to announce it before sending my report. But V. M. Nair, being in Reuters, did not need the army’s okay to send it!” The disappointment still shows in VPR’s voice.

He was close to Indira Gandhi because of his proximity to N. K. Seshan, her private secretary. Seshan and VPR were classmates in school. Having friends in those circles helped much, but often they would tell him classified stuff and tell him not to file the report. “I would never betray the trust they placed in me,” he remarks.

He teaches current affairs in the Press Academy, having been its chairman for some time earlier. He was UNI Deputy General manager, editor of Mathrubhumi and the Press Akademi Course director too. Reading helped him master the English language, and he still keeps himself busy. Fifty plus years in journalism has not dimmed his thirst for intellectual sessions. Every third Saturday, a few of his friends in the profession and others meet up.

Gardening is a passion and few know that VPR is a good cook. “I can cook a good ‘naadan’ chicken curry as also exotic Chinese dishes, learnt from cook books.”

What about the current trends in journalism? “I wish young journalists did their homework before meeting people or filing a story. When I teach some students, it is like a kathaprasangam, as there is no interaction at all. I wish they asked questions,” says this man from Wadakkancherry who says journalism took him all over the world. Contented, he has turned spiritual too, though travelling is still what he loves best.

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