Circa 1984. It was to be my first reporting assignment—of all places—to Kalmeshwar, 25 km from Nagpur. Several silly but valid questions arose in my mind: Did buses ply to the place? How could I, hired for a princely Rs 350 a month, pay the fare? And how would I visit a new place alone? These were soon put to rest. A taxi had been booked by the local correspondent of my paper, and two reporters from my paper’s sister publication were going too.
We visited a co-ed school to expose, like good journalists do, problems. The building was dilapidated; the loos were as pleasant as Bengaluru’s Vrishabhavathi River now is; and girls didn’t have a separate toilet.
The lacunae were soon outnumbered by angry men, people close to the management, who surrounded us. How dare we, they demanded, trespass on a temple of knowledge? We city slickers had no idea how schools functioned in small towns. The temperature in the courtyard, where we were shoved, rose in more ways than one. But for our correspondent’s demeanour, as refined as that of the gentlemen around us, blows would have landed on us. Following exchanges that invoked family members, we made our way out.
As he led us down a sun-baked road, our correspondent thanked us for coming at his request. He mumbled an apology for the kindness we had been put through. He led us to a tin-roof shed where lunch had been arranged for us. The feast was to be a godsend for the trainee journalist in me, who survived on two meals and was much closer to the poverty line than I am nowadays.
The pre-lunch conversation turned from how much the local tehsildar made to where good country liquor could be bought to how underpaid journalists were. I could relate only to the last thing.
“Please eat,” the stringer said. We dug into the fare before us: curry, rice, and chopped onions.
It had a satiny feel and was neither hard nor soft. In places, it felt sharp. My puzzling fingers extricated it from the red-and-orange liquid it had settled in. An open eye stared back at me as I placed it on my plate. There was a beak that had changed colours faster than a politician would. I had no courage—or stomach—to flip it to perceive the other organ of vision.
Swiftly, I poured the fiery curry over the pile of rice, returning the chicken head to where it came from. My throat had a scratchy feeling as I swallowed.
The next day, my story was published on page 4 as a four-column box item headlined “An apology for a school”.
Real news stories lie in the hinterland; I learned that afternoon 39 years ago.