By the water cooler contest

While I was working office life meant periods of high action, when the deadline loomed large, to periods of relative inaction, when we waited for the deadline to loom large.

Life was anything but boring back then. To give up a glimpse of what we grapple with in a newspaper office here are a few vignettes from long long ago.

The Lamba Ladki

Once we had a Bengali editor with a penchant for catchy headlines. He loved puns and suchlike. No sooner would a press realise come by with an invitation for an event and he’d be mulling over the headline even before the story was filed. For a piece on Minissha Lamba he took a fancy to the title, ‘Ek Lamba Ladki’. He just wanted it. I was dubious to say the least.

— first the headline was entirely in Hindi, not too good for an English paper
— the grammar was all wrong.. it had to be Lambi ladki, which of course he didn’t appreciate (no offence to my Bengali friends but I’m reporting this as it was).
— lastly, the biggest problem of them all, the petite Minissha Lamba was just not Lamba enough.

Such a tussle that was.

When the sub is too tired

You do know we work night shifts, right? Coming in at 6 and staying on some days till 2.30 or 3 am was the norm. So there was once this sub, editing the last piece for the day, with the editor breathing down his neck, the deadline long dead. He scurried through the copy, a final spell check and he was done. Next day the article appeared, with the spell check having converted the then Prime minister’s name to Atlas Behari Vampire. What a hoo haa followed.

And then we have reporters

However, it’s not nice to blame the sub editors all the times. The kind of copies they get take a lot out of them. A rookie reporter once had to stand in for the sports reporter. Wrote she, “The team struggled for a long time till finally lucky lady smiled at them…,” Lady luck – lucky lady.. what being the difference?

And the Mix Ups

There are of course famous mix ups. The typo that changed the ‘marital’ to ‘martial’ didn’t make much difference, they are perhaps the same thing. However, when the ‘R’ was dropped from friend, it quite altered the equation  and when ‘l’ was dropped from ‘public’ there were serious repercussions. Oh and there were others – the sub editor wrote ‘use picture of Zakir Hussain from Library’ and handed over the dummy to the designing team only to find the percussionist sitting in place of the President next morning.

D the driver

Outside office, life was no less exciting. We had a rather temperamental driver, let’s call him D, who took us home every night/morning. He drove like a maniac on those wide empty roads. To make matters interesting he was extremely short tempered and an alcoholic to boot. Imagine how  desperate we would have been to get home to entrust our lives to such a person.

So after we finished work we would go in search of him. Waking him up from his alcohol induced stupor was a task in itself. One night after I had managed to wake him, I found him walking away into the bushes that lined the road near our office. So worried was I that he’d find another quiet corner and drop off asleep I followed him calling, ‘Arey kahan ja rahe hain? Itni der ho gayi hai. Gari nikaliye, please’. Without turning around he lifted his little finger at me and disappeared into the bushes.

So embarrassed was I, I vowed never to call him again, ever.

Fortunately I had my own vehicle and on most days didn’t have to depend on him. However when it got exceptionally late D would be instructed to follow me as I drove home, since I lived pretty close by. He had a thing with my building guards. He would honk much before we reached the building expecting the guards to have the barrier open, which they refused to do insisting they had to check who’s in the vehicle before they let him in. This irked D no end. And one day he simply rammed the jeep into the barrier. The windshield came crashing down, filmy style.

And the big adventure

On the way home was a boys’ hostel. Normally things were pretty peaceful. One eventful day I rode on a little ahead of the office jeep. I had barely crossed the hostel when a stream of boys poured out brandishing swords. (Yes they would settle scores with swords and no I’m not joking neither is this a figment of my imagination). I rode on blissfully unaware of what was happening in my wake while my colleagues in the jeep had the scare of their lives. Mercifully it was an inter-hostel war so the boys weren’t interested in any of us at all plus the reporters got to write out an ‘aankhon dekha haal‘.

Life in a newspaper never has a dull moment.

 

This post is for Parul’s contest, cool momma to Adi and Ragini, the writer of a hilariously funny blog (Radio Parul) and the author of a book (Bringing Up Vasu, That first year). Her new book (By the Water Cooler) is ready to hit the stands and I’m looking for an autographed copy.