Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91
Vol. XXVII No. 15, November 16-30, 2017
On getting into print
by J.S. Raghavan
Nostalgia
Back in the 1960s, seized by the urge, I began writing my first article in English, keeping nearby a paperback, Carry on, Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse to prod me like a coach. My granny, a dreamer, in whom I confided, agog with the prospect of having the first writer in our family brewed a special cup of coffee for me.
Before long, the article gained shape into the readable final draft. I felt it should be typewritten before submission. Though I knew typing, I did not own a typewriter and, so, the perky Anglo Indian girl in our office, who hammered away my dictated official letters, promised to do the typing. From the neat copy, she produced, I discovered sheepishly she had also spell-checked, like dropping the second ‘u’ from ‘humourous’. I pardoned myself indulgently for such lapses, attributing them to a writer’s indifference to spelling when thoughts came rushing like water when the sluice gates were opened. Furthermore, our family heirloom, the Morocco bound Webster’s dictionary was borrowed by my Appu uncle who solved crossword puzzles.
After reading it several times, I doubted whether The Hindu would touch it with a ten-foot pole. “Do you like to read this?” I asked my granny, mischievously. Her rapid-fire sally, “I’ll read it in The Hindu,” oozing confidence, made me ecstatic.
Before long, I caught an auto rickshaw to Mount Road and entered their portals with my heart pounding like a tap drum. At the office, I explained the object of my visit to the male receptionist (The Hindu was a male bastion then) who spoke briefly over telephone and directed me to the floor where M. Krishnamoorthi (MK, as he was known) the Magazine Editor, had his chamber.
Waiting in the visitors’ lounge for his call, I deeply inhaled and enjoyed the smell of fresh newsprint, an olfactory treat to an aspiring writer. I braced myself to meet a coated and booted gentleman and even cursed myself for not wearing a tie. When the smiling peon ushered me into his room I had a pleasant surprise. MK was in full sleeved shirt and an eight cubit dhoti – maybe to exemplify his status as an Indo-Anglian editor. With his avuncular air, he made me feel more at ease with his homely namaskaram to my crisp ‘gud’ afternoon, ssssSir!, a crisp, mandatory salutation cultivated from my deployment under a rotund European, surrounded by young Anglo Indian ladies, wearing penciled eyebrows, lipstick, short skirts and high heels.
After the brief preliminaries, during which he pointed out that I looked too young to take on the mantle of authorship, he received my buff envelope containing the typescript. “We do not read a submission in the writer’s presence,” he explained, his “we” reminding me of Oscar Wilde’s quip, “Only three people are permitted to use the plural ‘we’ – the royalty, editors and men with tapeworms!” I felt immensely pleased in coming into contact with the second category.
Wonder of wonders, the story he received from me appeared within two Sundays, but I missed it. The girl who had typed it accidentally came upon it the next day, and showed it to me with a startled cry of amazement. My heart did a somersault at the sight of my byline in print in The Hindu! My jubilant, celebratory granny prepared a basin full of rava kesari for distribution to everyone who visited our household that day including Kuppan, the washerman, and Mari, the tree climbing coconut plucker.
Before long, I met V.P.V. Rajan, who edited the eveninger The Mail (now defunct), a favourite of the Anglo-Indians. This merry old soul who somehow reminded me of Old King Cole never turned me away even while having his brief post-prandial siesta in an easy chair in his chamber. Unlike The Hindu and Mail that permitted me to hand over my submissions in person, it was not possible to travel to Delhi or Bombay where a slew of newspapers had their main offices. The envelopes had to be dropped into the pillar boxes with prayers and petitions to Lord Ganesha whose portfolio it was to remove the obstacles, and sit waiting for the results, twiddling my thumbs.
But down the years, with the advent of electronic submission, face-to-face interaction has replaced computer-to-computer communion. Gone are the days of keeping a stack of self-addressed-stamped envelopes in readiness that may travel back with either the exhilarating acceptance letter lifting the spirits or the boomeranging articles with the rejection slips.
However, the articles emailed courtesy of yahoo or g-mail from the writer’s table make a beeline to the Editors’ PCs/laptops. At times even these mails go astray to spam, trash or unknown zones.
Hope computer wizards like Microsoft’s Bill Gates or Google’s Sundar Pichai will address this contentious issue and redress it by introducing a GAB, Gone Astray Box, so writers can once more fire rockets carrying the valuable payloads of their timeless masterpieces!
