Tales of flickering flame
VIJAY DEO JHA
RANCHI
Who are you writing for? Why do you do it? Who do you think you are?
— Margaret Atwood on writers and writing, in Negotiating with the Dead
Journalism is not an equal opportunity employer. Journalism must often be an even more discriminating concern, for the press of dubious claimants at its door is frenetic. This, mind you has been the realm of meritocracy which is now struggling to banish agents and agenda to allow market and money against a takeover, after the boom of liberalization in 1990.
Wannabe entrants should learn the new set of rules of this changed realm with so many midwife of pride and prejudice — editors and agent, publisher and promoter, market and money, reader and critic as stakeholders. And mind legendry editors have just been chucked to the bin of fable and journalists are now no more than paid labourers.
Rajnish Sharma is probably best able, at the moment, to convey the sensations of baptism into journalism— at once beatific and blistered. His book —Flickering Flames — has had such a lavish stewing at the hands of Indian reviewers you’d think the idea was to turn Rajnish fiction to pulp.
Reviewers found it many layered novel, ‘funny but not flippant’ a story of the metamorphosis of media through a love story and a take on journalism, its constant pressures and moments of joy, the free parties, the professional jealousy, the editorial-management divide and the inevitable edit bloopers.
And all these are woven around a love story between sensitive, cynical and reticent Aditya and the enigmatic Shenaz Zaidi, a young liberal woman that takes shapes quietly beyond frenzied editorial meetings of The Times a newspaper launched in the city of nawabs, Lucknow. They fall in love and their love bloomed to blight after Shenaz moved to Mauritius. It sprouted again after they met at the end of the story. The story of Aditya and Shenaz are the only romantic relief otherwise, “newspaper is just another product like soap. Journalists…paid labourers who must know the art of survival, shedding of intellectual pretensions and falling in line with the company's business interests".
The novel seems to bear the imprint Rajnish’s own trail and tribulation as a journalist craftily serving few slices of his life to munch. But then, why Lucknow, why not Delhi or Mumbai? “My novel draws largely from the people I came across over the years, but the inspiration was the feature I feel is unique to the city—communal harmony. I believe, in no other part of the world could there be such peaceful coexistence.”
“Problems and perils in the media world in small town like Ranchi, Patna, and Ranchi etc are more obvious than metros,” he says.
This 40 chapters book takes the readers from news room to some of the pulsating vista of the ‘city of Nawabs’ with around 15 interesting characters joining the main protagonist Aditya There is G.K. Bose, the editor looking like an "overgrown teddy bear with podgy hands”, desperately fighting a losing battle with the management over editorial control. There is a Bureau Chief; Rameez “with a Machiavellian axe to grind;” there is Siddh (Sid) Shukla, a "scrawny and frizzy haired" who have a sore in the eyes of the management.
Rajnish is bold in adminting what a journlaist feel: "working with passion is fine, but you must draw a line. Always remember that we are just employees, not the owners."
Flickering Flames seeks reply to Who are you writing for? Why do you write? Who do you think you are?
