The Battle Of Waterloo in Kolkata The soda water bottles were raining through the air, landing with a crack and splintering into sharp pieces of glass flying all around like shrapnel. Bricks turned into deadly missiles sending the homebound office crowd scurrying for shelter, wondering how these people could ever be involved in such a thing. It was the most unlikely crowd of young boys, girls and men engaged in this street battle. Some of them looked like they have never stepped out of a library, while the arm which threw the bottle at the enemy would have been more comfortable in pouring the soda into a glass of rum rather than wasting in this fashion. A hand that held the artists brush was gathering the bricks to throw back at the now retreating enemy. Shouts, screams of agony when a missile found its mark, choicest abuses filled the air as the army of journalists, artists, office clerks, chased a hardcore Leftist gang of union members into beating a hasty retreat down Waterloo Street in Central Kolkata. Fifty-two days of suffering taunts, insults, abuses, and being refused to enter their place of work which they all loved so much, had proved just too much for this crowd of media-persons, who took upon themselves to battle their way back to their typewriters winning their right to work. People who are best in reporting on conflict from the sidelines, were themselves in the frenzy of a vicious street fight. Office workers, street hawkers, shopkeepers, restaurant owners wondered how the likes of MJ Akbar, Shekhar Bhatia, Tarun Ganguly or a Subir Roy, some of the finest journalists in the country could be in the thick of this, battling like hardened street fighters along with their young colleagues of sub-editors, reporters, photographers and artists as they raced down Bentinck Street to occupy No 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street the home of The Telegraph which was barely a toddler of a few months old. Even before the fledgling publication had found its feet, it was hit by a crippling strike called by the union that lasted 52 days and threatened to collapse the newspaper in which we had staked our future. A handful of those remaining warriors of the Battle of Waterloo met yesterday in Kolkata to hug and just feel the warmth of being around each other. It was The Telegraph batch of 1982, the journalists who founded the newspaper. They did not just go to work there, they went to have fun and to beat their formidable competitor, The Statesman. They went there to re-write the history of English Journalism in India. They were not colleagues but brothers and sisters in arms who fought and loved with a passion unknown of in Indian journalism. The Telegraph diaspora is now spread worldwide, spawning remarkable success stories in every field they have gone into. Never will such a team ever happen. Teams happen when they battle together. For them the Telegraph was not just a newspaper, it was a passion! We got a taste of its once again last night when reunited. I am proud to belong to The Telegraph. It was owned by us and shall always be!
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 11:34:18 +0000
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