Living to Fight Another Day

“ Ravi, you are simply running,” away said my friend Ajay. “ I am running away to fight another day,” I returned. The year was 1997 and I had spent about a year in Business Standard as a journalist and had clearly failed to master the art of reporting. No one doubted my writing skills but the consensus in the newspaper was that I quite simply did not know reporting. To tell the truth I myself had come to the same conclusion. The dream of 1996 had clearly turned into the nightmare of 1997.

It was then that I made what in retrospect turned out to be a wise decision. I simply decided to take a break for around 15 days around mid-May and went off on a holiday to Chennai and Bangalore. I can also say that with the benefit of hindsight that I did the right thing by simply refusing to even think about my work and simply enjoyed myself. The net result of all that was that I felt refreshed when I came back.

I also found able allies on the road to making my career work: My friend Ajay and my boss R Sriram who is the present Editor of The Economic Times, Bangalore. Ajay not only assured me that I had the skills to succeed in the profession, but also displayed a surprising knowledge of journalism for one who was not a journalist. He guided me on newspaper requirements. Sriram actually taught me the tricks of the trade. Amongst other things he taught the art of developing sources. Plus the art of simply being firm with companies\individuals who were ducking queries that were uncomfortable for them. For instance, a leading Indian company had submitted a corporate restructuring to the financial institutions and I had managed to get hold of a document outlining that. Despite that, Sriram first insisted that I get a comment from the company and later when the company ducked responding to my faxed questionnaire under one pretext or the other, he insisted on my telling the company in question that I intended to go-ahead with story now without a comment from its end. The response was instantaneous. In two minutes a person from the CEO’s office was on the line gving me a comment. That was Sriram for you. He not only taught me but a bunch of mostly rookie Business Standard journalists between 1996 and 1999 the art of reporting.

All this worked for I did get two promotions in the next three years in Business Standard. Of course it was time to move on from the newspaper and eventually from journalism. I have never forgotten that in life it is important to live to fight another day. Nor of course Ajay and Sriram who helped me make that decision work.