Chandan Mitra, an obituary I never wanted to write

It was 2003 and I was busy designing the proposed special supplement for the upcoming Cricket World Cup in South Africa when I got a call from the Editor-in-Chief’s secretary to tell me that Boss was calling.
Not very familiar with the chambers in the rarified stratosphere of the office back then, I took my time wondering what would I have done wrong for the Big Boss to call me in.
A stern-looking Chandan Mitra asked me in and told me to sit. He then started going through the day’s newspaper that was always kept on his desk as I twiddled my thumbs to somehow tide over the silence.
Finally, I asked, “All well? Did something go wrong in the Edition I took out yesterday, sir?” He stared me down for a long moment and then asked: “How are you prepping for the World Cup?”
I breathed a sigh of relief to then talked animatedly about the ideas I would be implementing to deck up the supplement, the columnists I had chosen, the special AP service that he would need to sanction for good pictures, how glossy the newsprint should be and what kind of revenue we could generate from this “collectible” product.
“You need to show me a completed version of this supplement by 8 pm tonight,” he said, dismissing me till then. I went into overdrive and finished the four-page dummy by 7 pm and returned to his chamber with the prototype.

He looked at it and sanctioned all the overheads required and mentioned, praised the design and the proposed content, gave some suggestions and then called my junior colleague, handed over the dummy to him and said: “You will be handling this, choose your team and stick to the design and content as conceived.”
I was shocked. My work had been taken away from me. He looked straight at me as I battled anger and disappointment to somehow keep a straight face as I got up to leave.

Mindhunter of hidden talent

“I am not over with you, sit down,” he said. I looked back at him and this is what he said to my silent question about his highhanded behaviour: “Get set, you are travelling to South Africa to cover the World Cup!”
I looked at him incredulously. He must be joking, right? After all, I was just the Sunday Editor back then freshly out of the newsdesk and had never travelled for Sports assignments. “But I have never written on cricket, never travelled to cover any sporting event. I don’t even have a passport!” I told him.
“You will do a great job,” he insisted, adding “please get going on the logistics, I have another meeting coming up.”

Everyone’s Editor

That was Chandan Mitra for you. An absolute delight of an Editor with a keen eye for talent. He was always known to be a reporter’s Editor but those who have had the pleasure of working for him know him as much more than that.
He was young untapped talent’s Editor, he was an adventurous Editor, he was a journalist’s Editor, be it on the desk or in the field.
He drew me out of my desk job and gave me assignments and territories that I had not traversed earlier. His belief and trust in who he chose for what job had an innate singularity of correctness.

Gentle yet ruthless professional

Over the next three decades that I worked for him, I was witness to his unconventional and easy style of leading and generating meaningful content and effort from all quarters of the office. From getting an 18-year-old fresher to cover pinnacle assignments, to making veterans of the job work to his command, he was the best and only man I would ever consider my true Boss.
The good thing is that many others in the media would feel and say the same, even if they did not agree with his political views and shifts. But as he always said, he was a political animal who viewed ideologies as the mistresses of change. Despite drawing all-pervasive chagrin by shifting from extreme Left to Centre to Right and then to Left of Centre, he never deterred from what he chose to do.

Utility was his buzzword

He would often attach a person’s relevance to his utility in office and he never shied from telling a staffer when he or she became irrelevant. Under a gentlemanly easy-breezy demeanour he concealed a streak of ruthlessness which never shied away from abruptly throwing out people from their job if need be.
Yet, a driver could talk to him about his village with as much ease as a top politician would about politics or a strategist would about policy, change and world affairs.
The thing about him was that he had immense knowledge of issues that he was interested in and that could range from OP Nayyar’s music to what the Chief Minister should do to cut the traffic chaos, to what 10, Janpath needed or where the Obamas were headed with America.
A mine of knowledge

His breeziness as a writer was immensely inspirational, simply because it unobtrusively embedded his deep-rooted knowledge of the subject and his undeterred views on what he was writing about.
Yearenders would never be complete without his year’s Hindi music list of top 20 and elections could not get life without his ditties on a Jayalalitha or a Mulayam Singh Yadav.

An Editor with no airs

As Editor-in-Chief he would dote on turning into a reporter, a chronicler of the political swings in the country. Almost always, he would catch the pulse of the voters and where the win was headed, often getting into arguments with his own political bureau. It was only him who could carry a front-page edit titled “Jaya Jaya He” when no one was giving J Jayalalitha a chance of victory in Tamil Nadu during her first election which catapulted her to become the State’s first woman Chief Minister.
Road-tripping and writing travelogues were his other passions and it was with them that he would take a break from his life’s first love of political writing. He once wrote a piece on the relevance of Indian Railways and the romance of train travel by writing a cover story on Bollywood songs inspired by the rail system. He also drove down in his SUV from Jammu and Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in the South just for fun.

A rivetting writer

Those were revetting pieces, as rivetting as the personality he sported with so much elan that you could catch him having golgappas at Bengali Market all alone after his regular swimming break from the office or on national television gently pitching his political viewpoints on a raging subject amid a cacophony of yelling debaters.
His poison was never the usual privileges of an arrived media personality, like trips abroad or being part of the exclusive guest lists of Page 3 people in Delhi, or for that matter being on the rolls of corporate giants. “I want to be one of those 700 people who are Lok Sabha members. That’s where the real power lies,” he would often say.

Searing political ambition

That quest for a Lok Sabha seat never bore fruit for him despite long innings in the power corridors of the nation. The two-time Rajya Sabha MP’s dream to enter the Lok Sabha remained a dream as his ill-health and adverse financial circumstances started eating into his confidence and his utility in politics, something that he always kept a premium on, started waning.
Yes, he was a consummate Editor, the kind no one makes nowadays. Yes, he was the best friend, philosopher and guide you could have. And yes, he was a disaster of a businessman, much like his idol in Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan.

Mitra died young at 66

At 66, he had so much more he wanted to do but death came calling after a brain surgery that dented not only his gait but his thinking abilities which were the star point of his existence. Add to that the allegations of him allowing The Pioneer’s legacy to get mired in the ignominy of being called a rag, and one almost wishes this proud yet gentleman had passed before the financial mess came calling him off the premises of the only baby he loved with his life.
From that day of May 1998 when on the steps of Link House, he stopped me mid-way to ask should he buy The Pioneer, to 32 years later when he had run it successfully with his sweat toil and blood, always working away to get the funds to run a sinking ship, not many would know how he spent every ounce of his energy to keeping The Pioneer afloat after the Thapars decided to shut shop on the centennial paper.
Yes, he lost the battle for The Pioneer in the end but that’s also when he lost the battle to life and the two somehow seem to have been inevitably linked if one were to look back.
So long, Mr Mitra, there will never be a Boss like you