In a world where bad news is in no short supply, in a profession where atrocities are on the daily news list, some tragedies hurt more than others.
Journalists of almost every leaning were jolted when Gauri Lankesh was murdered; here was a journalist killed, gunned down, not in war zone or in some troubled but remote part of the country, but in cold blood, on the doorstep of her home in one of India’s busiest metropolises. We shouldn’t have been more distressed by this atrocity than by the assassinations of so many others in our profession but, what gods there may be forgive us, we were. We said to each other, This could have been you. Or me.
In a city where nine or ten people die on the tracks every day, falling from or being knocked down by trains or being hit while dangling from a coach overburdened to a ludicrous degree, one more senseless rail tragedy shouldn’t have penetrated our callused souls. But we’ve all travelled those trains at some point, even those who, like this writer, can now afford four wheels and a guaranteed window seat. As the city’s business district migrated north and split up like so many amoeba, many of us work or have worked in Lower Parel or thereabouts, and have exited the local trains at that railway station and, shoulder to shoulder with the MBAs and the office assistants, battled our way out of the sardine cans, through the scrum on that pedestrian bridge and out into the dubious charms of the erstwhile mills district, on our way to the upcycled godowns and shiny glass towers where, amidst the banks and MNCs and upmarket watering holes, our publications, now freed from the need to house printing presses, send out the news and views in bits and bytes.
We stay unflustered, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. We call and WhatsApp our colleagues and chivvy or are chivvied for ground reports. We monitor the social media channels, looking for more information. When the grim list comes in, we scan it quickly for familiar names and then breathe a sigh of relief and go back to the newsgathering, a little ashamed of that relief. We point our cameras at the stray shoes left behind knowing how powerful the image will be, we hit the record buttons on our phones and stick them in the faces of the weeping, we go to hospitals, overcome our human tendency not to bother the distressed and ask people in hospital beds questions, we edit, trimming lines for greater impact, spellchecking copy typed with one finger on cellphones, scouring our memories and the web for background material the reporter is too busy to include in her copy. We plan the questions we will ask of power tomorrow.
It’s the job. It’s not as soul-battering as being a first responder or an emergency room medic. It’s just news. We file, we move on.
As we send in the story about the twentysomething chartered accountant in her first job or the lifelong best friends who were on their way to the Dadar flower market to buy offerings for the gods for their community puja, we let the thought surface, This could have been you. Or me. And then a photographer sends in a picture of candles lining that pedestrian bridge, a small bunch of marigolds among them. A homage to those who died. It’s silly. It’s symbolism. But then, some of us, we break down and cry.
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