Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Sounds of Silence

For a man whose name was synonymous with big media, monumental marketing and mega brand building, it is ironic that one of the distinct traits of late Pradeep Guha is his silences.

For a man whose name was synonymous with big media, monumental marketing and mega brand building, it is ironic that what I will most remember about late Pradeep Guha, who I had the privilege to work with for almost a decade, are his silences.

Pradeep Guha’s silences were as famous as his gruff taciturn demeanour and his diminutive power-packed presence. (Illustration: Gajanan Nirphale)

The profound pause before he would weigh in on some or the other crucial decision, that would impact lakhs worth of business or the next day’s headlines, or both.

The two-second lull before he would effortlessly, as if from thin air, come up with a brilliant solution to a problem that had vexed an entire department of a dozen or more high-paid management whizzes.

The ever watchful, reticence with which he’d sit in a room full of big talkers and hard blowers, assessing the exact truth of what was being spoken and why.

The intense stillness with which he would collect his thoughts and carefully choose his words before broaching a difficult but much-needed conversation.

The unexpected half-beat gap between sentences in which he would recognise the black humour in a dire situation, making his eyes twinkle and his frown change into a delighted smile.

Indeed, PG’s silences were as famous as his gruff taciturn demeanour and his diminutive power-packed presence. In them you could almost hear his prodigious, supercomputer of a brain, computing, assessing, analysing, determining...

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I’d hardly known much about him when I’d cold-called him for an appointment in the mid-nineties, after returning to Mumbai, having spent 10 years away in Kolkata and Delhi.

TOI, where I had worked briefly in the late Seventies, had been a high-minded, venerable institution with exalted editors spinning in their individual orbits, supported by phalanxes of devoted editorial and clerical staff.

Since then, I was told much had changed, and one of the men responsible for most of it was Samir Jain’s all-powerful right-hand man — Pradeep Guha, known by his acronym PG. In need of regular work, my idea had been to call on PG and try to interest him in giving me some freelance assignment in the form of a regular column, in one or the other of his new initiatives.

What had greeted me when I alighted on the second floor to proceed to his office had made my jaw drop. Acres of polished marble, granite and teak interspersed with expensive artwork and fabrics heralded the pathway to his cabin. The sight of young smartly-dressed executives buzzing around in in a manner that evoked a beehive — a very well-oiled beehive — emphasised how very different things had become since I’d last been there.

I did not have to wait long before I was ushered into his private corner room cabin, crammed with books, trophies, plaques, Ganesha statues and other glittering memorabilia and bric-a-brac.

Amid it all was the man himself — soft-spoken, taciturn, politely attentive, as he heard me out. After I was done, I was afforded the first of the famous silences that I would get so used to later.

“Of course, you could write for us, but why don’t you come on board as editor of the Bombay Times?” he’d said, so softly, that at first, I thought I’d misheard him. But I hadn’t.. “There is a vacancy at the moment,” he’d continued, “And I think you’d be ideal for the job.”

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. Yes, by then, I’d been a journalist for two decades, but editing a newspaper, even one which at that time was a twice a week, four-pager, seemed like another ball game altogether — one which I felt I had neither the capability nor the confidence for. And I told him so.

Again, another pause, another silence. “Think about it for a few days,” he’d said, “I have a feeling you can do it.”

“If I do accept, I’ll require a lot of hand-holding,” I recall saying, before I’d exited, my pulse racing, my head spinning...

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To say that working with PG was like receiving a master class in media studies would be an understatement. The Nineties were a period of staggering growth for the group — Femina’s Miss Indias were erupting into international beauty title holders with alarming frequency; Filmfare had grown from being a stodgy film journal to a formidable brand which hosted much-vaunted awards nights, celebrated for their razzle dazzle performances and world class production values; Bombay Times grew rapidly from a twice-a-week supplement to a full-fledged seven-days-a-week paper, with ever-increasing pages that sometimes ran into hundreds. There were incursions in trendy new areas such as radio, retail, modelling, event management, and the approach to PG’s office often resembled Virar station on a Monday morning, except that those who waited were not ordinary commuters but A-list actors, celebrated captains of industries, advertising legends and impossibly long-legged models and international beauty queens.

And at the centre of it all, as if he were the silent eye of the cyclone, was PG — a storehouse of wisdom and confidence, a fount of brilliant ideas, our supreme leader who commanded unfailing loyalty and respect.

And yet, even for those among us who worked with him daily, he would remain an enigma wrapped in a puzzle inside a paradox.

A man whose youth had been spent as an ardent leftist, who now headed one of the country’s most commercially successful ventures; the host of some of the biggest, most glamorous, most celebrated parties who remained a pillar of rectitude, and probity till the very end, until every last guest had made their staggering way home.

The creator and confidante of some of the country’s most desirable women who not once — not ever — was known for even the slightest hint of inappropriate remark or disrespect in his dealings with them, who even as he groomed them kept his distance, and what’s more, demanded the same high standards from his entire department towards them.

The inceptor of ever-glamorous mega events who, in his heart and home, remained a middle-class boy with simple, abiding family values.

A warm and gracious host along with his loving wife Papia, at whose fabulous Diwali parties the country’s top film stars, media magnates and society queens rubbed shoulders with his oldest, humblest, most ordinary colleagues and friends.

A tough, often exacting boss, one whose presence evoked awe and trepidation, yet someone who you knew would always have your back, if the chips were down.

A man who revelled in gossip but never, not once, was known to have betrayed a confidence.

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Saying goodbye to someone who has had such an impact on one’s life is always tough, but with PG it is almost impossible. On the morning of his funeral, we stood in the lobby of his building — family, friends, colleagues, old and new, overwhelmed, dazed, unsure of what to do, what to say, how to proceed…

The man who had created the magic that we all had experienced at one time or the other lay silent nearby — this time for ever.

I began this column by saying how it was PG’s silences that spoke the most, even louder than his word or his deeds…

And now, all we are left with is the silence…