Professional Approach

It was the time John was struggling to find his feet and adapt to the phenomenon of ‘professionalism’ that meant the dominance of brain over the heart while slaughtering his human sensitivity. Perhaps that was a requirement in the cut-throat world of crime reporting marked by stiff competitiveness.

Those were the times when spot reporting was the norm and reporters were supposed to visit the place where the crime had been committed. In his case these spots were the most gory and grotesque ones where rapes, stabbings, suicides, immolations and shootings had occurred. It was not like the present times when stories are mainly filed sitting on desktops using Google search engines, press releases and imagination.

Coming from a small town in the hills with almost zero crime rate, all this was a painful learning for him — the daily visits to morgues, burns wards in hospitals and the crime spots. Somehow, he had been good at developing sources besides building good rapport with cops. Just in a few days John had developed the knack for tracking down a story albeit he was always poor at marketing them.

It was on a summer night when after having had his greasy grub at the office canteen, he had decided to go out and have a pan— that weird combo of a sweet pan with a dash of kimam.

He came across two cops on patrol who had parked their motorcycle outside the pan shop for a cigarette. Just as he started chit-chatting with them, he could hear a message crackling over their wireless sets.

“Body found… taken to police station,” the sets crackled. It took just a few seconds to know from the cops that there had been a murder of a child in the nearby slums, his body had been recovered and sent to the police station very close to his office.

John did not waste any time. He rushed to his desk, picked up the phone and dialled the police station. Much to his relief the voice of the Munshi at the other end was known to him and he could also hear a senior officer in the background. This meant the FIR was yet to be registered and the Munshi would not be able to spell out details on the phone.

“I know a child has been murdered and you cannot give much detail right now. Just answer in ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Has the killer been arrested?” he asked.

“Yes,” came the reply.

“Should I come in one hour to get the details?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the response in a flat voice.

He rushed to the local desk, asked the chief sub editor to keep space for an exclusive murder story. The term ‘exclusive’ used to give him a different thrill at that time. He left saying the story would land very close to the deadline.

In exactly an hour, he arrived at the police station. He saw a tiny corpse covered with a white cloth lying in a corner.

The Station House Officer (SHO), also from John’s native state, was shocked and uneasy at his arrival but was courteous enough to offer him a seat and said, “I admire your network. Many of our own personnel are not aware of this murder. Ask, what you want to know.”

Suddenly John’s eyes fell on a thin, short man sitting on the floor next to the SHO with his head down. He could gauge that this was the man who had murdered the child.

“He strangulated the child of his neighbour with a telephone wire over a petty dispute with the child’s father. The child used to play with him daily and that is why he could easily lure him away by offering the child a candy to kill him in cold blood,” said the SHO.

Cold blooded indeed! The accused sat very calmly with no remorse on his face which disturbed this reporter no end.

He decided to question the killer directly and asked him, “Didn’t your conscience shake even for a second before killing the child who had played in your lap since his birth? The child must have pleaded helplessly when you were committing the act.”

“He fluttered like a bird for a while before going limp,” was the bone chilling reply from the murderer.

“Did you not give him the usual police treatment?” he asked the SHO.

“The treatment is given to make them confess which this fellow has already done,” he said while showering the accused with another round of thrashing.

John came back, filed the story, earned his byline and went back to his hovel to spend a night of unease despite having consumed a substantial amount of alcohol to blur the unperturbed face of the killer from his memory.

The next morning proved to be more difficult when he was asked by his chief reporter to do a follow up on the incident and do a ‘human interest’ story. The chief reporter insisted that he procure a photograph of the murdered child.

So John went to the small neighbourhood in the slum to find that everyone was aware of the gruesome murder except the mother of the child who was still under the impression that the boy had gone missing.

He had to carry out the brutal act of telling her that he was from a newspaper and wanted a picture of the boy which could be published to help locate the child. The frail woman with anxiety writ on her face went inside and brought out a complete photo album of her child and he flipped through it looking for the best picture that was fit for publishing. He took a couple of pictures and left stone faced to meet the boy’s father, a rickshaw puller, waiting outside the post mortem room of the local hospital to take the body of the boy for cremation. 

The poor man fell at the feet of the reporter pleading that he must ensure that the killer of his son received the harshest of punishments.

John came back, wrote the "human interest" story that proved to be another step in his becoming inhuman and insensitive. He earned another byline and appreciation for the quality of the picture that he had brought along with him. After his evening slosh he could claim that he had taken a big step towards imbibing the professional approach demanded by his vocation.

ENDS

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