SANKARSHAN THAKUR: WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? by Mihir Srivastava
- Mihir Srivastava
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
I hadn’t met Sankarshan Thakur for many years but occasionally ran into him at Khan Market where I'd greet him by saying, ‘Kaise hai janab?’ We’d promised to meet soon, but we never kept our promise.
There was the satisfaction that he’s around and that he’s doing well, and that he continues to be his quintessential self, playful, boyish, abrupt, argumentative, caring and affectionate. Age, in that sense, hadn’t touched him.
A few days ago, I was told that he’s critical. I texted him, ‘it will be nice to see you’. The next day I saw him wrapped in a white sheet, his eyes firmly shut. I was standing witnessing his last rites. Something shifted in me. Delhi will not be the same. And that mortality is real was reemphasized in a way that felt unsettling.
He was one of my first set of editors, and I dealt with him a lot more after my immediate boss Hartosh Singh Bal quit Tehelka. Sankarshan liked the way I pitched a story, but my stories, though good, he’d point out, were not true to the expectations I create by making a bold pitch. He would say you speak better than you write, or sometimes, write like you speak, and the two are very different skills. So I write about him in the way I'd talk about him.
He relived his father, Janardan Thakur, an accomplished journalist, in the stories he wrote. There was a certain continuity. He would talk about his father a lot, as a metaphor. And I learned a lot about him from his son. In retrospect, I got to know, or understand, a lot about Sankarshan, how he works, in this way.
Sankarshan was an interesting character. And one of the reasons for it is that he had a strong emotional engagement with people, that’s why he liked some of them a lot, and some others he loved to hate. Though this could change with time, how he felt about people.
He observed people intuitively and minutely, and seemed to know all he needed to know about a person by merely glancing. And that intense gaze–you'd know if Sankarshan was looking at you.
He practiced journalism as an art form. To document the unfolding of events, situations or people, he had to understand (rather live) the larger context, which is not just polity, but history, culture, demography and a host of other factors. That’s why he’d visit Bihar (his home state), Kashmir and such places he had a forte, as a traveller, stay for a week or two, not to report stories, but to soak in the nuances, make friends, to be able to tell a better story when he is required to. And that he did with the facility of a poet.
I was lucky to be one of the people he liked. He said you’re going to last long in journalism. To the best of my understanding, it was a complement. He gave me two volumes of A History of Newspapers in the United States by James Melvin Lee. I read the second volume first, and hadn’t started reading the first when he took them back after three months. “If you haven’t read it by now, you never will,” he said with an air of finality.
Sankarshan helped many write critical political stories. The one that comes to my mind is Socialite Socialism, which was the title he gave to my field report on the village of Saifai–the fiefdom of the clan of Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh–had an airstrip, and the Bollywood megastar would come and perform there.
He internalized the English etiquettes. He dressed well and his attire was quintessential of his personality, de rigueur, didn’t change much in all these years. Sankarshan carried himself in style, and would wear a formal jacket round the year. His shirt collar was upright covering his neck, and an owlet brooch was a fixture on his coat’s left collar. Five fountain pens of different colours were lodged in the inside pocket of his coat. He loved to make drawings with a fountain pen. They were really good. He could be an artist if he hadn't become a writer (which, too, is an art form). I have a special affinity for writers who can draw.
The thing that I liked about him was that he was an liberal man, an internationalist of sorts who was deeply rooted in his culture. He loved to converse in Maithili, and regretted that his daughter and son, growing up in Delhi, might not learn the dialect.
Every other day, he’d come to Market 1 of C.R.Park to buy fish; they’d be neatly packed in a big icebox kept in the boot of his car. I lived not far from the market. Sometimes after work, he’d come and fry Rohu in a big pan I had while others from work would join in for an evening of fun conversations and heated discussions. Later, he preferred Hartosh’s barsati in East of Kailash.
A party man (not the political party), Sankarshan enjoyed his drink and his company as much as they did his. When there was a larger group, as the gathering would get fueled up, he’d declare with aplomb, ‘shun refinements.’ The instrumental music would give way to a Bollywood dance number, and we’d dance like there’s no tomorrow. He’d lead us on the dance floor with zest much like the edit floor.
He relived his father, Janardan Thakur, an accomplished journalist, in the stories he wrote. There was a certain continuity. He would talk about his father a lot, as a metaphor. And I learned a lot about him from his son. When I saw Janardan's picture, I thought I had met him. In retrospect, I got to know, or understand, a lot about Sankarshan in this way.
Some who claim to know his father, say Babloo (that's him) didn't do justice to his potential and talent. I vehemently disagree. He wrote well, played a long innings of over 40 years in journalism, penned many books and created a body of work.
He was the executive editor in Tehelka when I joined, and he didn't like the ‘executive’ part. ‘I’m a journalist and not a manager,’ he said when he quit Tehelka to join The Telegraph, his alma mater in journalism, as a roving editor–if I remember correctly, a position created for him. Though, he did take up some ‘executive’ work when he was elevated, a few years ago, as the chief editor of the paper.
Many political commentators owe their career to him. They were conspicuous in their absence at his last rites. That would upset him. There were many, who were there because they loved reading him, may not have known him well personally. That would make him happy.
This must be 2007. We in the political bureau were waiting for him to join us at a bar one evening, we were celebrating an investigative story. A lady colleague texted him from my mobile, ‘where the hell are you *****?’ She liberally employed some offensive adjectives that were very personal. I was blissfully unaware. When he joined us, he looked at me longer than usual and said, ‘thanks for the reminder,’ and then he immediately knew it was not me. The lady in question started laughing aloud. Sankarshan was bemused. The party started. The party must go on.