Ranjona Banerji: Chronicles of Death Unknown

By Ranjona Banerji

 

This is about the deaths of two friends, very different and met under very different circumstances.

 

Veteran journalist Lajpat Rai died a few months ago and most of us only heard about from a sensitive and informative Facebook post by senior journalist Vidyadhar Date, from end-June:

 

“Am sorry to report the passing away of Mr Lajpat Rai, a consistent campaigner for secularism, veteran journalist and a very active voice in the cultural Left, in IPTA, Indian People’s Theatre Association. I sent him a greeting on Facebook on his birthday today and then rang up only to hear from his daughter that he had passed away two months ago. Such is life. His death has remained unknown even in Left circles.

 

“He introduced me to reputed poet Kaifi Azmi and several other Urdu writers and artistes. He also made several prominent writers politically aware in their early days. Gulzar was among them. Gulzar was born a Sikh and Lajpat Rai used to tell me that he cut Gulzar’s long hair and beard as part of the secularizing process: “Maine, Gulzar ke Baal Katwaye…

 

“Lajpat wrote a column in Mid-Day for several years consistently attacking communalism. There were hundreds of activists like him for decades who consistently fought for secularism silently without claiming any spotlight for themselves. Our democratic movement owes them gratitude.”

 

I met Lajpat Rai in the 1990s when I worked at Mid-Day. We made an immediate connection, perhaps by our commitment to secularism. But also perhaps because Lajpat was an irrepressible force, a repository of endless inside stories about India’s intellectuals, politicians, film stars and just about everybody. He was also a keen analyst of political events. And he was, at all times, unequivocally against religious bigotry. In the 1990s, some may remember, we saw the relentless rise of Hindutva and a concomitant rise of open prejudice against religious minorities in India. Lajpat was fearless in his condemnation of Hindutva, even amongst allegations of his Communist leanings which in fact he did not hide at all.

 

He was a free spirit in many ways and the essential journalist, unbound by shackles of position and post. His kind will not walk again.

 

**

 

The suicide of Saumit Sinh, former colleague at DNA and friend is a far more tragic story. For a fun-loving and hard-working journalist to reach such a low point that he had to kill himself at 40 is unimaginable.

 

Sinh also tried to buck the trend and set up for himself. After he left the last newspaper he worked for, he created a website where he did hard investigative stories on the glamourous side of life, unusual in the current scenario where fluff is almost all that most journalists can provide. But it was a hard ask and Sinh, it appears, paid a heavy price.

 

As in the case of Lajpat Rai, where so many of us who knew him had no clue that he had passed away, so in the case of Sinh’s problems.  The following blog by our DNA colleague and friend Soumyadipta Banerjee makes it clear how much Sinh had to suffer and how he was abandoned in his hour of need by us, his friends.

 

I last met Sinh a couple of years ago where we had a meal together and squabbled over our political differences. I had no clue that he went through hell since then. This is from Soumyadipta’s blog:

 

“On March 31st 2016, I received a message from his wife that Saumit has been admitted to Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behavioural Science at Vikas Marg, New Delhi.

 

When I called Sushma, she told me that Saumit had been missing for two days and when he was finally found, a doctor advised that he be hospitalised immediately.

 

I send out WhatsApp messages to all common friends on my contact list, especially former colleagues of DNA with whom we have worked. I also asked Sushma to tell me if Saumit had any friends in the Mumbai “page three” circuit. I took down the names from her and sent out a message to them too.

 

Only three people responded positively and immediately — 1. Ayaz Memon 2. Parvez Damania and 3. Nandita Puri. All of them did whatever they could in that hour of crisis.

 

Others just ignored my message.

 

Some of my journalist friends sent me a sad smiley in return and most of them didn’t even respond to the WhatsApp message even though I know that they had read it. The “page three” celebs about whom Saumit had written so many “positive” articles couldn’t be less bothered.

 

We tried to put out the message that he is sick and he needs help. Nobody, I repeat, nobody even responded to my call.”

 

There are several tragedies in these words, not least that you can depend on so few. And as a journalist you can almost never – and should not – depend on people you write about. But you should at least be able to depend on your friends in your hour of need. But for Lajpat and Saumit, as Soumyadipta scathingly puts it, none of us were there.

https://soumyadipta.com/2016/07/05/when-saumit-singh-needed-help-none-of-you-were-there/