Lucknow Boy

Vinod Mehta's 'Lucknow Boy' not only tells the most fascinating tale of Indian print media, its evolution from a newsbreaking estate to a powerbroking one, from a textual to a design and style mode, from political separations to political openness accommodated within the same space, often with Mehta as an important agent of a change waiting to occur. It also tells us how the rich and powerful made and manipulated news and information in a country struggling to decentralize its power structure. Demolishing some of the most respectable names that few would like to tarnish, Mehta lived up to his reputation of the most sacked editor of India. There is a dryness to his humour that reminds me of Somerset Maugham. There are also revealations about his own and others' personal lives that I am not sure we have a precedent to deliver. He quotes from letters, newspaper columns, editorials, and conversations, offering to us the opportunity to stare directly into the eyes of the utterances that turned a corner. Halfway through the book, I am as pleased with it as I've been with any. Not only did he live in interesting times, he made his times far more interesting.

If news is something someone somewhere does not want to read, Mehta's book is true to his trade. Few who have found a mention in it would be pleased to read it. But even they would acknowledge that Mehta has been kinder to them than he could/should have been.