INDIA
Vishnu's press
by A special correspondent
William's arrival at the Grand Hotel Calcutta created a sudden resurgence of optimism among the weary press corps in the bar. "If The Beast is sending from London, it's got to be war," they muttered.
The morning after his arrival, William reported to the information officer, a Mr Vishnu, to join the long queue of applicants for permits to go somewhere — anywhere — outside the city in search of the crisis. "I too was once a member of your union of journalists," said Mr Vishnu soberly, "so I too understand your difficulties. But everything must be referred to Delhi. You must say where you wish to go, on what date, and for what exact purpose. Then,. perhaps in two or three days, Delhi will quickly reply to me by telex and you may begin to make formal application to Miss Bose at the Department of External Affairs and then, perhaps — if it is not the weekend — to Colonel Rathi of the army." William had already heard stories of correspondents who had tried to telephone Mr Vishnu at home at the weekend, to be reminded that "just as in England, this is the weekend! This is my holiday! I do not work!" He had also learned that, to date, there was no record of a permit being issued until at least two days after its date of effectiveness had passed. "Where would you suggest I apply to go to?" he asked cautiously. "You must specify exactly!" said Mr Vishnu. " Many areas are prohibited areas and if your request is refused, you must come again and apply for another area. But only Delhi can decide! I understand your difficulties so well, but only Delhi can decide."
It was about the third day after William's arrival that the strain of total inactivity, of Mr Vishnu, of Miss Bose, of Colonel Rathi began to tell visibly on his colleagues. Wenlock Jakes, the famous Asian correspondent of one of the great American weekly magazines, dispatched an outraged cable to Mrs Gandhi in person, deploring the facilities available to the world's press. Infuriated by the lack of a reply, he began sidling round the bar one evening, canvassing support for the immediate establishment of a full-scale Correspondents' Association and committee to bring truly massive pressure to bear. Everybody agreed that the morale • problem was growing serious.
The arrests had already begun. An American television crew were seized and held for two hours. An English reporter was seized with his cameraman while doing a battle-torn piece to camera in front of an aged Pakistani tank, souvenir of the earlier war, in the midst of a Calcutta public park.
In the bar, every evening now, as journalists anxiously scanned the tables to be sure every one of their number was present and accounted for — no worse disaster than a lone successful colleague at the front — mutual reminiscences began to sag and pall. One freelance, offering his services to the pay of any bidder, was stripping back his shirt to display his shrapnel scars from Vietnam as brutal testimonial to his talents. Another, wish father to the thought, had taken to dining in full jungle greens, ready at any moment to blend into the scenery among the palm trees around the pool. William began to miss the cheery company of the more lurid Sundaypaper reporters he met on stories at home, with their tales of being pursued down High Streets by exposed adulterers.
But day after day, never totally stunned into silence, the press corps was getting its news out. Bribe leapt upon bribe in the eager hands of the telex operator, struggling with the ten thousand word dispatches of the ever-prolific Japanese and Scandinavian contingents. Every incoming rumour from outside the city was seized upon, mauled, and dispatched, high key or low key according to the mood of the moment. Airline stewardesses were seduced not for themselves but for their potential as carrier pigeons.
One day, to the horror of those left behind, a party was suddenly whisked towards Bangla Desh to disembus somewhere in the bush. They walked several miles to the nearest "liberated area." But on their return that night, tired and blistered, while they brought tales of guerrilla training and enemy mortaring, there was still.no whisper of the real situation along the front. It had all, it appeared, been a diversionary action by the authorities. Nobody was any the wiser, and as the hotel press corps still swelled daily, the cries of Fleet Street baying for blood or peace but no more compromise echoed across the hotel lobbies.
The heavy brigade, that ubiquitous hard core of old-time foreign correspondents clustered in a tight knot in their own corner, disdaining the company of younger bloods still new to stalemate. An air of mystery was their stock-in-trade, to be guarded jealously. They were never to be seen all day until they returned to the hotel late in the evening, travel-stained and weary, to commune discreetly with each other about the key story. Their less experienced rivals worried desperately about these absences for some days, fearful they had been caught out, until one morning William chanced to call in at the bar of a hotel a few hundred yards down the street. The same tight knot were communing discreetly over their glasses with the same air of intense concentration. William had merely found their daylight hibernation quarters. The young bloods breathed again.
Days dragged on. Two of the more ruthlessly attractive female correspondents arrived, applied their own stock-in-trade of alternate savagery and feminine emotionalism on Mr Vishnu with no more success than their male colleagues, and settled back to consider which if any of the press corps were to be permitted to win this assignment's furious race towards their beds.
Mr Vishnu himself, gaining confidence and experience, moved from strength to strength. "It does not matter if Delhi says permits are to be speeded up and granted. Only Delhi can grant them and I am sending them to Delhi. See Colonel Rathi to learn where you may go. If Colonel Rathi sent you to me, I send you to Miss Bose. You may write your applications again, and you may try again. I understand all your difficulties, I too was a member of your union of journalists. But why not fly to Delhi yourselves? Then you may come back here and apply for the permits again and if I send them to Delhi they will come back again."
William wondered what he would need to do to have a chance of honourable deportation.
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