Political and the personal
Reviewed by KV Prasad

Durbar
By Tavleen Singh. Hachette. Pages 312. Rs 599

journalists often taken pride in having been witness to history and writing its first draft. From that viewpoint, the book is a narration of events seen by a hard-boiled, sharp-nosed reporter who honed her skills as a city reporter rising to be a prominent political correspondent and a columnist.

The journey takes the reader through some of the most interesting phases in Indian's political history, starting from the 1975-77 internal Emergency era till the assassination of her son and successor Rajiv Gandhi and on the people who mattered during their regime. Peppered in between are the days of the Janata Party Government, the United Front Government later and the turmoil in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. Tavleen Singh is one of the few in the tribe who broke the glass ceiling of being a woman in a newsroom who dared to challenge the all-male dominated work atmosphere and make a mark in journalism.

Current-day women journalists can juxtapose how path-breaking efforts by these pioneers brought about a change in perception as also difficult situations that a lady reporter had to face visiting hotspots or elections through the heat and under difficult conditions. It is a narrative of that period but is woven largely around the author's relationship with India's first political family that starts on a cosy and warm note but ends on a sour one. Yet, barring a brief indication when the author surmises that the sharp dip in equations was more on account of her professional assessment of Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister, there is nothing to suggest why it took a turn for the worse. In the book, she does praise the warmth of her relationship with Sonia Gandhi till it turned frosty.

The author does not hide how her upper-middle class upbringing allowed her access to the upper crust of society in Delhi including parties with persons who went on to achieve the status of personalities in the field of arts, culture, journalism and politics. She is equally candid in allowing a peep into her personal life and having borne a son for a person she cared for. The book could have done without an obvious error on page 254 which inadvertently mentions that villagers watched the popular serial Ramayana on "communal" television sets, a sign of the publisher's dependence on the spell-check that could not detect that it should have read a more appropriate "community" television sets.

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