It was the evening of the 27th November 2008, the Mumbai terror attacks had entered their second day. Our camera crew was outside Nariman house, a Jewish community centre. A senior editor, outdoor broadcast vehicle staff, a colleague from the assignment team and a cameraperson were present at the location. The studios wanted a live hit with the senior editor, the senior editor in question liked to use very difficult synonyms for easiest of words (would always look up difficult words on dictionary), spoke with an American accent and spoke grammatically wrong Hindi, also using a volley of hindi expletives to show how bad his Hindi was. Not that he was raised in Amreeka, he was a Vasant Vihar kid, whose uncle is also a well known journalist, known for his shut-mouth, clinched-teeth English accent grilling. Now the Senior editor was live, the cameras were rolling, my assignment desk colleague and I, we just stood aside watching the senior editor play around with his accent and all. Suddenly the crowd behind him started pushing him, trying to ofcourse come in the frame of a channel which is beamed all over India. He tried reasoning with the crowd in that American accent, bad Hindi, and then he dropped the Editor bomb, you know I am the Senior Editor and you know, we journalists are the fourth pillar of democracy asking the cameraperson to shoot the crowd which cant behave itself, the crowd blamed the press for the terrorist attacks and wanted pounce on him, finish him off. Thanks to the OB crew, the cameraperson, my Colleague and I, we formed that, human chain , similar to the one which claims to have saved Rajdeep to get the Editor out of the trouble. The Editor in question almost lost his shoe trying to run off from the crowd.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 09:12:05 +0000
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