Aniruddha Bahal's A Taste for Trouble: From the diary of an intrepid journalist

Sandeep Sinha

Life for a journalist can be exciting for those who take the plunge. A storm-rider with his penchant for the unconventional and taking on the establishment, Aniruddha Bahal never found himself to be short on this count.

His is a long odyssey, full of twists and turns, that also highlights the unpredictability which can characterise the life of a journalist.

The book, penned during the confinement of the lockdown, shows the thoughts wandering, travelling back to roots, amid the uncertainties of the time. The childhood and the familial ties, which go a long way in shaping the worldview, are all recounted. Bahal left home in Allahabad for Bombay when still young without informing his family and it was an Iranian student who counselled him to go back, booking a phone call for him to speak to his mother.

There is the bonhomie among the Allahabadis, whom you run into at as diverse a place as Oslo and on board to Tokyo. The accent is just unmistakable.

He describes his meeting with Tarun Tejpal, how he had actually gone to Delhi on a business trip, but realised he needed a job. It was his persistence that landed him the job and with a man who became his mentor till they parted ways. Tejpal finds praise as an editor but there are doubts over his professional ethics.

Bahal had his moment of glory when he got to the bottom of the match-fixing scandal in cricket that created a storm in 1997 during the India-South Africa Test match. It was Manoj Prabhakar’s interview that split the cricket world wide open. He has a word of advice though, saying the term ‘investigative’ is bandied about too much these days and any story that is researched properly, on which you spend time, can become an investigative story, even it is structured as a profile or a feature. Working at a magazine helped as it did not have the pressure of the daily deadlines of a newspaper. About Justice YV Chadrachud, who conducted an inquiry into the scandal, he says he just exonerated everyone.

With Tejpal, he founded an online investigative portal, Tehelka, the first serious news platform set up by established journalists. There, Operation West End was undertaken to investigate the soft underbelly of defence procurement. Bangaru Laxman caught on camera taking cash, the conviction of Jaya Jaitley, Laxman’s arrest and the constitution of the Justice Venkataswami Commission of Inquiry have all been narrated in the book.

The writer is of the view that journalism will always be there, but India is hardly now a place where you can be confident of judicial protection after doing a story that exposes corruption, political parties and leaders. Courts aren’t as fastidious in protecting journalists, RTI practitioners and whistleblowers from the prosecution of a state that has become unhinged, he says.

The tale hints at his entrepreneurial acumen with a flair for risk-taking, a bit of indulgence from his seniors, the ordeals at the hands of the government, as also the ephemeral nature of the profession of which he professes to be a proud practitioner.