10/10 for a newspaper story written by an intern from Commits

Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014) lived up to my expectations (and perhaps exceeded hers) when she filed this brilliant story for Mumbai's Afternoon Despatch & Courier, the newspaper I helped to launch in March 1985.

Natasha, who is a co-editor of the college newspaper, worked as an intern with the Afternoon for six weeks over April-May and earned her first byline with this story about the "bottle bulbs" that are lighting up the lives of the city's slum-dwellers.

When I first read the article after she had sent me the link, I wrote back:

What a FAN-TAS-TIC story, Natasha! From idea to execution to presentation, I give it 10/10.

NATASHA REGO

And then I asked her a few questions to understand better how she got the idea for the story in the first place and how she went about getting the facts and putting them together:

• How did you get the idea?

Facebook, of course. Although many ideas have come to me when I take extensive walks around this city, I chose to work on this one because I related to the girls about whom I wrote, and it was a slum story (I've been wanting to enter a slum since I arrived and this seemed like a perfect opportunity).

• How did you go about working on it?

I read everything on the girls' website and Facebook page, especially the press coverage that they've received in the past. I found that it told a one-sided story — that of the girls. I wanted to try and tell one that included the people who benefited from the work of the organisation.

• What were the obstacles and how did you overcome them?

Language — my biggest drawback in Mumbai. But the girls that I went to the slum with translated for me, and a surprisingly large number of people spoke English.

• What was the contribution of your bosses and colleagues?

Sub-editor and colleague Prasad Madhukar Patil pushed me to submit my photos and write stories after he saw my editing work.

When I asked Deputy News Editor Robin Shukla what I should keep in mind when I went out to cover this story, considering it was going to be my first, he gave me some good advice. He said not to be influenced by anything in the reports that I had read, and to give it my own "new" perspective, because I'm so new to the city.
 
Editor-in-Chief Carol Andrade had the final say, of course. I think she liked it.

• What has the feedback been — from colleagues, from readers, from those featured in the story?

One of my bosses said that this is the kind of stories the newspaper should be doing.

• What was your reaction to seeing your story in print?

I did not go to work the day they processed this issue, so I didn't know it was going to get a full page. Walking to work the next day, I picked up an issue to find that it was spread over page 5 and had a border to make it stand out...like it was a special story. My sub-editor boss later told me that he told the page designers to put the border in.

Natasha, who is a discerning and savvy photographer, too, later published another interesting feature in the Afternoon. This one concerns an unsung organisation that teaches art to slum children. Read it here: "Everyone is an artist. No conditions apply!" (The photographs that accompany this piece, as well as the article on the "bottle bulbs", were shot by Natasha.)

• Commitscions, our brand ambassadors, have done well for themselves in the media industry and they have done us proud, too. Here are just a few of the many stories written by those who have become, or will become, journalists:

1. An excellent example of an interview-based local feature (Dipankar Paul, Class of 2009)

2. Gutsy Commits student's story in Bangalore Mirror — an inspiration to women everywhere (Ankita Sengupta, Class of 2013)

3. "My mum has my FB password. Big deal" (Sonakshi Nandy, Class of 2014)

4. Asha Bhosle: The Eternal Indian Idol — scroll down to "An interview with Asha Bhosle in Kuwait" (Priyanka Saligram, Class of 2009)

5. Reading Made Easy — Why Just Books Libraries Work (Nilofer D'Souza, Class of 2009)

6. Jet lag is for amateurs (Ayesha Tabassum, Class of 2007)

...and, finally, a Page 1 story in yesterday's Bangalore Mirror by Tapasya Mitra Mazumder (Class of 2013), who only joined the newspaper five days ago:

You can read Tapasya's report here. Well done, all!

• ALSO READ: "The many lessons I learnt as an intern with a leading Bangalore newspaper. Plus: Professionalism, the Commits way".

UPDATE (August 11, 2013): Natasha Rego and some of the photographs she made when she was in Mumbai were the subject of a "Diary" item in The Afternoon yesterday:

Read the item here: "Picture Perfect!" (go to Page 3)

Remembering Behram Contractor

Of all the editors and senior journalists I have worked with, Behram "Busybee" Contractor is the one I loved and respected the most.

I began my journalistic career as a trainee sub-editor with Mid Day in June 1981 when Behram was the chief reporter (that was his official designation but everyone knew he was the person whose opinions mattered the most at the paper). Four years later, a bunch of us left Mid Day with Behram to launch a rival evening newspaper, The Afternoon Despatch & Courier. And in October 1988, I left The Afternoon to become the features editor of the Dubai-based Khaleej Times.

BEHRAM CONTRACTOR (SECOND FROM LEFT) PRESIDING OVER THE FESTIVITIES AT ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE HAUNTS AFTER A LONG DAY AT THE OFFICE.

I remained sporadically in touch with Behram and my former colleagues all through my stay abroad. Every time I visited Mumbai I made it a point to visit Afternoon House and spend some time sitting across Behram at his desk and making conversation, which, with Behram, was not always an easy thing. He was known, among other things, as the funny man of journalism thanks to his famous and popular "Busybee" column, but he was an intensely private individual who preferred to let his writing do the talking.

When he died in Mumbai on April 9, 2001, I was in Goa at a company event (I had joined TMG in Bangalore after my stint in Dubai came to an end). I received the sad news from my good friend Shashikant Jadhav, who was Behram's assistant as well as the nominal publisher of The Afternoon.

Many glowing tributes were paid to the man who had become synonymous with the city but none was more personal than the appreciation written by Mark Manuel, my dear friend and former colleague. Mark's tribute to Behram was carried as the lead story in The Afternoon with the masthead placed below it. "I wrote it in one shot at 5 a.m., after coming to work straight from the hospital where I had sat beside his body through the night," Mark says. "I don't like to think it is one of my best pieces of writing, but people (and total strangers, too) still connect me today with this obituary... it is as if Behram's hand was on my head even from beyond the grave."

Here is the tribute in its entirety:

Busybee is no more!

Afternoon House’s heartbeat has stopped…

By Mark Manuel

I’ve trained under the man and worked with him for 17 years, but there is one assignment Behram Contractor, better known as Busybee, never prepared me for. The heart-wrenching task of announcing his own death and writing his obituary in this newspaper. Yes, he is really no more. And something within me dies to bring you this terrible, tragic news. He passed away early this morning, round about 00.40 o’clock, as peacefully and gently as the summer rain that had fallen on the city in the dawn hour yesterday.

I was with him when he died. We were rushing him to Bombay Hospital in an ambulance, his wife Farzana Contractor, the CEO of this newspaper, a close family friend Rajesh Jain, and Drs. Aashish Sahukar and Anil Sharma. The doctors were massaging his heart and pumping oxygen into his lungs artificially. And Dr. B. K. Goyal, as big an institution in medicine as Busybee was in journalism, was driving behind us in his own car. It was a short drive, from Busybee’s residence on Malabar Hill to Bombay Hospital, six kilometres here or there. And with flashing lights and wailing siren, we covered it in minutes. But somewhere along Walkeshwar Road, we lost him. I like to think he quietly slipped away.

Since April last year, he had been suffering indifferent health. First, a definite weakening of the lungs caused by half a lifetime of smoking 60 cigarettes a day. Then, in September, a fracture in the lower spine brought about by a spasm of coughing. He was not bedridden, only advised bed rest, but Busybee got up in lesser time than it takes to cure a fever and did what he knew best… he started writing his column. It had been appearing sporadically due to his absences, and he was eager to resume it and go full steam ahead. And he would have, but for the fact that he was pushing 70 and age and his health had begun telling on him.

On January 18, after he did a tremendous cover story for Upper Crust (Farzana Contractor’s food, wine and lifestyle magazine) at the Taj Mahal Hotel over dinner, Busybee suffered a relapse of the old lung problem. That winter night, too, we thought we had lost him. But Dr. Goyal and Dr. Sharma worked on Busybee’s heart and lungs until dawn and got him fit again to do battle for another three months.

I think he might have pulled through yet again, for both Busybee and Behram were fighter and survivor, but he had been through a major shock earlier in the day that must have weakened him considerably. Farzana’s eldest brother, Capt. Ishrat Khan, had died tragically in a road accident near Panvel. And although Busybee usually kept his emotions in check, Farzana’s loss must have upset him. For by midnight, we were fighting to save his own life. Truly if God has been cruel and unjust with anybody, that person is Farzana Contractor. I’d like to see this same God give her the strength to go through two funerals today.

BEHRAM AS SEEN BY ONE OF HIS CLOSEST FRIENDS, THE CARTOONIST MARIO MIRANDA.

For those who did not know him personally, Behram Contractor and Busybee was the son of the late Hirabai and Pirojshaw Contractor, and brother of Darius (UK) and Dadi (France). With his passing away, India has lost its only full-time genuine satirist, and easily the country’s most popular humorist. His column, "Round and About", began with the Evening News of India in 1966, went over to Mid Day in 1979, and came to stay with this newspaper in 1985. It is the longest-written column in this history of newspaper journalism and maybe Guinness will find space in its next edition to mention this.

But… you will read no more Busybee on the back page of this newspaper, no guides to eating out by him in the colour pages. And you will not come across Behram Contractor’s pithy, evocative essays on the edit page, nor find his poetic and fluid interviews of celebrities on Wednesday. His terse and laconic style of writing that had a rhythm in it which created an impression of deadpan comedy, is over. I have lost a colleague and a friend. But you have lost your favourite columnist. And I don’t know whose loss is greater. R.I.P.

• You can feast on the "Round and About" archives here: "Busybee Forever".

Also read:

• "Empty wooden chair", by Salil Tripathi in Tehelka

• "He was the soft spoken soul of Mumbai" — Pritish Nandy's tribute to Behram Contractor

• "My friend Behram", by Vinod Mehta, editorial chairman of the Outlook group

• "Busybee wrote every day for 36 years, beginning in 1955, and he died in 2001. He was one of the few Indian writers in English who had an individual style and that made him special. He was confident enough, and good enough, to develop it and stay with it for decades. Like Hemingway, he had found his writing voice early in life and did not change it." — Read Aakar Patel's heart-felt tribute to the journalism of Behram Contractor here.