P.Lankesh: Random Recollections

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In a way P.Lankesh revolutionized the Kannada journalism when he launched his tabloid in 1979. He wrote what most of the people wanted to express - ire against politicians and officials. I guess Indians were frustrated so much never before than they were during 70s and 80s. It was almost like one party system although there were hundreds of political parties. Congress virtually dictated the country. If not for its dictatorship, why we had to suffer the most humiliating emergency in mid 70s? Very few journalists dared to write against people in power. They had their reasons, of course. Unless the journalist belonged to a big group like Indian Express, they were routinely eliminated. Famous examples of such systematic eliminations included Siddramesh of 'Kranthi Patrike' in Gulburga who was murdered (long after emergency) allegedly by policemen, Pingali Dashrath Rao, a firebrand journalist in Andrapradesh and Lala Jagat Narain in Punjab.

When political situation was so dicey and fluid, Lankesh Patrike was released and found its place in almost every middle class home. If you remember the typical middle class homes back in 70s and 80s, they were stereotypes - reasonably educated but disillusioned-to-the-core men, homely women and a bunch of kids. Men usually were in decent jobs but it was almost hands to mouth living with many state governments going bankrupt without even having money to pay their employees. Private sector was totally in shambles due to red tape and did not have much hope for a common man. These people were wretched and those times were miserable. They were just coming out of the trauma of emergency and bringing themselves in terms with ghostly atrocities committed by Congress regime during emergency. Can you believe a man was eliminated just because he dared to write a simple letter to BBC to voice his opinion against emergency in world's largest democracy? After having seen such atrocities, common man could only shut up and could not and did not dare to do anything against any politician in power.

Lankesh started his tabloid against all odds. His first resolution was to run a tabloid without any advertisement. Quite commendable keeping in mind the tabloid economy during 70s and 80s.

When Lankesh Patrike was at its best, it used to be like a grenade. People used to look forward to every Thursday to see Lankesh busting some corrupt politician or a bureaucrat. People literally perceived him to be their messiah and he was, in fact, to some extent before he was blinded by the popularity.

It was amazing to see Lankesh and his trusted band of journalists unmasking even most notorious and powerful politicians like Devraj Urs, Gundu Rao and Bangarappa. Knowing the horrifying and dreadful criminal background of people who used to hang around with these politicians, it must have taken Lankesh a heart of iron to write some of the most stinging and revealing articles against these people and their cronies.

To tell you how criminalized the politics was then, a mirror to Congress culture -an opposition leader (who went on to become India's funniest Prime Minister ever) literally cried in the house pleading for protection after the car in which he was traveling was attacked (just to threaten and not to harm) by a deadly gangster (killed by rivals in 1989) at the behest of ruling party to tone down the opposition leader. Lankesh stripped these politicians and gangsters cleanly in the next issue and left the ruling party in a most embarrassing situation. It was a great risk to write against most powerful man in Karnataka, right hand of Indira Gandhi and who patronized most dangerous gangsters under 'Indira Brigade'. I still remember people used to rejoice every time Lankesh stripped these horrible people. It was indeed an expression of a common man who was craving to do just that for a long time.

'Lankesh Patrike', which was a purely political tabloid to begin with, could not stay so for long as Lankesh who was a poet, novelist and storywriter at heart wanted a platform to pursue his literary interests as well. Lankesh introduced several columns to provide some literary touch to his otherwise scandal-ridden tabloid. Moreover, in the process of taking against the government in a big way, he had earned the wrath of many book houses and publishers and did not have any other option than using this platform to keep his literary skills alive.

Lankesh and Master Heerannayya (a great dramatist) almost worked in unison to be the voice of the public. Lankesh provided the raw material for Heerannayya who used them to thrash the government in his dramas with his witty, stinging and hit-where-it-hurts-most dialogs. People who saw Master Heerannya's best plays like ‘Lanchavtara’, ‘Devadasi’ said dialogs never used to be same and people used to go show after show to see versatile Heerannya's legendary mockery of our system and politicians. Just to illustrate, in one curt and hard hitting dialog Heerannayya asks a co-actor if he belonged to 'Langada Congress’ (Congress of the skirt - Indira Congress) or 'Lingada Congress' (Congress of the men - Nija'linga'ppa congress) and continues his tirade against both of them. I do not know if these two warriors worked with an agreement but it seemed like that.

Lankesh declared that there couldn’t be anything private to people in public life. He said people had all the right to know what their public servants did in and out of their houses. This stance and articles to that effect made people to hide his tabloid from kids and guests as it used to invariably contain sexual escapades of people at the helm of ruling us. No doubt, he used to sensationalize them (with titles like 'Gundappana Pallanga PuraNa') but they used to quite true and narrated in a very realistic and comical (or derogatory) fashion.

His ire was not limited just against politicians. Having come from a hardcore socialist background he could not stand any hypocrites. People exposed by him included many film actresses who posed Sita, Parvati and other sacred women on the screen and became Menakas and Rambhas at private 'mehfils' organized to cater to the bodily pleasures politicians, which were normally funded by liquor barons. Some movie people even shifted out of Bangalore to escape the scathing attack from the pen which many times seemed mightier than sword.

Lankesh was a powerful wave and mesmerized masses with his charisma. He traveled all over Karnataka molding the public opinion which was to shape up and show up exactly as he wanted in the elections to come. Many people from 'Bandaya Sahitya' (revolutionary literature) movement also wrote in Lankesh Patrike. One among them was Champa, firebrand writer from Dharwad. Whatever may be his prejudices, he wrote quite well to reflect the frustrations of the intellectual class. Pundalika Shet wrote best of the best news from north Karnataka region in his inimitable and hilarious style of 'Hubballiyava'. Lankesh grew a band of investigative journalists. Nobody can vouch for the honesty, credibility, transparency or integrity of any of these people including Lankesh but at that time people had the attitude "do whatever you want but please expose these hooligans who are ruling us". People were ready to excuse journalists if they made some money or were slightly unethical. Desperation excuses many blunders as petty mistakes.

Lankesh had introduced some funny columns in his tabloid. One was 'Tuntata' (Naughty Game) where he used to provide an X-rated joke every week. Obscenity or decency of the joke in that column is an individual opinion. They used to be kind of ticklish.

Another popular column was 'Che !! Che!!' where in some snippets about current events and people were written and the last sentence ended with ridiculing 'Che' Che'.

Quite a lot of people from Dharwad -Hubli were also whitewashed by Lankesh and his journalists. They included politicians, university professors, businessmen and even my school(for its alleged malpractice during examinations). That itself is a dirty story, let's not get into that. In brief, when petty politics enters the portals of a school then even God cannot save the reputation of the school. That's what happened in case of my school.

As far as I remember, most sensational news 'Lankesh Patrike' wrote(about Dharwad) was exposing the scandal at local nurse's training school. This scandal (1986, August-September) which later became to be remembered as 'Rama Bhandari sex scandal' was dissected so microscopically that any man with guts could not digest the guts of the warden to force the inmates (at gun point) to prostitution and could not believe the likes of the people involved in it. Very sadly that was going on for long time and was exposed only in 1986. Lankesh and reporters were very graphical (bordering on pornography) with the details of the scandal. Did they have to be so graphical ? - a different question. Probably yes from a juicy tabloid's point of view. But, it did make people aware what can happen with their daughters in shady hostels managed by pervert wardens. Several leading politicians and top bureaucrats from North Karnataka were named and defamed including a former union minister. May be because of the curses of those poor exploited girls, that man who was the uncrowned king of congress in North Karnataka then, is a nameless person today with his sons losing in successive elections. Law of the nature prevails.

Another funny incident involved an academician (also a poet, columnist etc.) of Dharwad. This man suddenly became an eyesore for Lankesh and consequently target for intimidation. So, Lankesh sent one of his reporters to interview this academician for an exclusive interview, which used to be a regular feature in his tabloid. This academician, unwary of anything, gave the interview. If you have read interviews in ‘Lankesh Patrike’, you know how they are- juicy, scandalous, face slapping and gut wrenching. This academician, who had married twice (and divorced once), was asked by the interviewing reporter "Professor, despite having married twice you are seen with various women that too in many wrong places. How is that?" Academician had expected this question, as he was pretty open about his various relationships. But, he, being a poet and a literary figure, cannot answer very plainly like me and you - right? He gave a very poetic answer "I have been searching for a mother figure in every woman I meet and you know how difficult it is to identify if a woman you are with is a motherly figure or not. So, you know the rest. Hee! Hee! (Sheepish grin)". Next week interview appeared and also an article about hanky panky of the academician. It is rumored that academician ran out of Dharwad for a week. Even funnier thing happened when he returned after a week. Academician returned from his exile after a week and purchased the new issue of 'Lankesh Patrike', at the bus stand, just see if there was any more dirt on him. This time there was another load of dirt - an interview from his first wife. Academician took away from the bus stand itself for another couple of weeks of exile.

No other journalist might have been sued as many times as Lankesh was. It used to be a joke that anybody, who knew what defamation was, could sue Lankesh. He had a good legal backing from some prominent legal authorities and that helped him to maneuver the legal stuff with ease many times and a few times press council and other governing bodies passed strictures against him and his tabloid. He accepted them with a view that it was an inevitable ramification of explosive journalism.

1983 election was going to be an acid test for Lankesh and his followers who had vowed to oust Congress regime in Karnataka. Yes, it happened and congress government led by Gundu Rao fell under the burden of its own misdeeds.

Lankesh was a kingmaker then as he was quite instrumental in getting the support of independents and other minority parties for Janata government, which lacked the required majority. Lankesh and his followers took great pride in the fact that their archrival Gundu Rao had suffered most humiliating defeat in his home constituency of Somwarpet in Coorg district.

Frankly speaking, 'Lankesh Patrike' never came to my house. Although, I used to buy it once a while, it was not encouraged because my dad always viewed explosive journalism was nothing but yellow journalism. He did not like the idea where a person's "self" was attacked, tainted, humiliated and persecuted rather than his misdeeds. But, I used to end up reading most of the issues, may be bit late, at my grand parent's place where they used to buy it regularly and also used to retain it for good number of years for variety of purposes (one among them was to cross-reference future stories).

From 1990-94, I did not get to read much of Lankesh other than occasional here and there. I became a regular reader once again in 1994 and remained that way more or less for one year.

I noticed that, over the years, Lankesh seemed to have become very cynical. He could never appreciate anything or anybody. It was rather surprising to see him so cynical whose aim was to drive cynicism out of people's psyche and instill optimism. He had fallen out with most of his contemporaries or vice versa. His pen was oozing venomous ink from week to week, sometimes even against many decent and respectable personalities. So, a whole array of people sued him big time. Even an actress sued him for writing derogatory stuff against her. No idea what happened to those cases and who won.

Once he spewed venom against novelist late Sathyakaama (who wrote extensively on black magic and witchcraft) for some reason or no reason. Newsmen asked Sathyakaama for his reaction on Lankesh’s comment. Sathyakaama known for his wit replied coolly "Lankesh is a very brilliant person. He is so brilliant that he thinks all the spots where hair grows is a head. You can not question the brilliance of a person with so many heads".

Champa, his closet buddy of yesteryears, had fallen out with Lankesh soon after Janata government came to power in 1983. Then on, it was a constant rivalry between two great eccentrics. Lankesh was kind of disillusioned with Champa in particular and his brainchild ‘Bandaya Sahithya’ in general. Champa, as he said in an interview, felt Lankesh was too much of a fascist to tolerate. After the split both of them reserved at least a small column to attack each other in their respective magazines ‘Lankesh Patrike ‘ and ‘Sankramana’. Lankesh had a better mileage in the verbal war, with his regular and widely circulated weekly where as Champa’s ‘Sankramana’ came whenever Champa woke up and even after that it mostly ended up in ‘Kapila Hotel’ to serve ‘girmit’ or ‘mirchi’ than to reach masses.

He was not Lankesh of yesteryears. He had lost that Midas touch which made his tabloid a hot weekly. He was also accused of racketeering and blackmailing by other journalists. I am always open this allegation against any journalist as any journalist can become a blackmailer and ransom demanded is proportional to the venom in his/her pen.

I guess even many politicians funded campaign against Lankesh and his tabloid to settle some old scores. There were some tabloids whose sole aim was to throw dirt on Lankesh (or rather on his credibility) week after week.

Even physically Lankesh had gone down. His indiscriminate lifestyle had taken its toll as he wrote in his columns. He wrote that he tortured himself during his years of frustration with cigarettes and booze. He had quit smoking with great difficulty and had become a moderate drinker. Few years back he also suffered a paralytic stroke, which took away eyesight in one of his eyes and exhausted him quite a bit. However, he continued to write regular columns that he used to write from the very beginning. He passed on the baton to his trusted deputies for news coverage and investigative reports.

In 1997 June, war broke between two leading tabloids - 'Lankesh Patrike' and another tabloid. Both were led by people who believed they were absolutely right. The clash began over a most silly issue. If you remember, a Swami of one of the eight 'mathas' in Udupi came out of sainthood to marry his longtime devotee-turned-lover to get into family life. As usual Lankesh wrote a brief article condemning the pseudo-swami. Next week other tabloid, which was instrumental in getting the swami out of all hurdles towards family hood, criticized Lankesh for being so insensitive to swami who preferred to come out clean rather than messing the devotional atmosphere of the 'math' with his secret liaisons. Lankesh was dubbed as worst of the worst cynics and sadist and was also shown some grammatical errors in his writing. He was ridiculed to be an old bull with no juice and was asked to retire. This was too much for anybody and for Lankesh it was like an open invitation for 'jungi kusthi'.

After that it was quite sensational with two stalwarts trading blow of pulp after pulp for few weeks. They had put their entire reporting machinery to investigate on each other and wrote extensively which did not spare their personal lives and secrets of yesteryears. One bad point when two journalists start to fight is that names of many unrelated people come out just as a natural consequence and age-old wounds reopen to bleed. Anyway, both people dumped each other's reputation on the road and rains of June probably washed it away.

Last time I laid my hands on Lankesh Patrike was just before election of 1999. It was very evident that Lankesh Patrike had identified itself with Congress for some reason and was writing totally against BJP. It is not quite unnatural in politics and journalism where foes and friends interchange very easily.

By the way, Lankesh made few movies also and one of them had won a national award. He wrote extensively and fared well in the area of small stories. He published many books from his publishing house and introduced many writers and poets.

Lankesh lived dangerously and wrote more dangerously. He was for total freedom of expression and used (or as some people claim 'misused') his right to free speech very liberally and most effectively. He was not a man to be shackled by traditions or orthodoxy of any type. He was totally against caste system as per 'Manu Smrithi' and ridiculed that aspect of Hindu religion every time he got a chance. His writing had the frankness that hurt and a generous dose of cynical humor, which made reading gory details of scandals bearable.

Lankesh yearned to be somewhat different from stereotypes and it was evident from events in his life when he left comfortable faculty position at Bangalore University to jump into uncertain career of independent journalism with little or no experience. At least in the beginning he took a lot of risk and later ,as many claim, became a risk to many people because of the power of his pen. His eccentricity and idiosyncrasies became very popular. He actually started the true tabloid era in Kannada journalism and many people tried to cash on that but not as successfully as he did.