Profile Spiced With Rantings

I am a post graduate in Economics from BITS, Pilani. I started professional life as a trainee journalist working for the financial daily, Business Standard. I have also worked as an economist for Indian Chamber of Commerce and Bengal National Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

The longest time I have spent in any organization is the Times of India Group where I worked for The Economic Times, Kolkata edition for all of 12 years – one yug as they say in Indian mythology – from 1991 to 2003 and quit at the prime of my career – when I was safely entrenched as Senior News Coordinator (News Editor for all practical purposes but my bosses in their great wisdom decided that giving me that designation would tend to give me more importance than what I deserved – at least in their opinion). During the last couple of years they took away the pages that I edited and wrote for personally although those pages were widely read and very popular. Instead, that popularity did me in. The bosses’ hackles were raised and finding that it was impossible to sack me, they demanded that I simply spend eight hours in office every day doing nothing, and, for which they were happy to pay me a fat salary. In fact, their problem was I wanted to work and earn my pay instead of doing what most of them do – sit and look at their PC screens in their private cubicles watching you know what. But my desire to write and to work somehow posed unknown threats to them and they preferred a silent, idle Arjun rather than a pen-wielding, active Arjun. So, I had to make a choice – die a slow, painful and certain death by staying with The Economic Times (ET) or take the risk of going out into the big bad world and seek out a way to work and live elsewhere. Once I got out of ET, I found to my horror that most all editors in Kolkata were petrified of me – all doors were closed to me. As if I was some kind of pariah or someone suffering from some contagious disease and I just could not be allowed in.

Luckily, a Bengali magazine launched by a Hyderabad-based company needed a Bong to run their mag, Cyber Yug, a monthly on information technology. Till then I had never ever written a single line in Bengali as a professional writer or journalist. But I knew I knew my Bengali – I had written enough love letters in my youth – and I was desperate enough to take the plunge. The magazine took off very well under my editorship and with circulation growing at a rate of 2000 copies a month despite no support from the management, I was feeling that, perhaps, I could still make my mark as a journalist. But that was not to be. The management decided it was better to sack me and let the magazine be edited by the Art Director.

Now, don’t ask me why – that is how it has all along been for me – instead of recognition, I normally end up getting a kick up my backside. They tell me its all about stars – that I have to wear a thousand and one rings to tackle my “enemies” and there are many of them. Not only that. I am told, these “enemies” are very powerful as well. Again don’t ask me why I should have so many “enemies” and that too powerful ones. I have hardly done anything remarkable yet – at least, I don’t think anybody in the public domain really cares to know anything about what I may or may not have done or will ever do – remarkable or otherwise – so the reasons for this “enmity” is quite beyond me. But, it is evident that such “enmity” exists. So I have to suffer this fate. So be it.

Early 2006, I became a freelance journalist and an English/Bengali translator working over the Internet – telecommuting, as they say. I was earning a fair bit initially – at least more than what I used to as News Editor of ET and as much as what I used to get as Executive Editor of Cyber Yug. But by the end of the year, my beginner’s luck ran out and I suddenly found myself without any earnings whatsoever. For nearly a year now the situation has not changed and I am surviving somehow earning from odd jobs here and there. Very recently, someone has been kind enough to take me on as a content writer and I write for an Indian management site. Content Writer – pooh! It’s a glorified way of saying that I am required to write 800 word pieces by rewriting articles written by others to earn Rs 150 for each such masterpiece. At this rate, getting back to earning what I used to do is well-nigh impossible. So, I have to make do with whatever I can manage.

The urge to give vent to my views and to write – my primary passion in life – something that had got me into journalism in the first place – is still burning bright. No perceived sense of gross injustice, or victimization, or favoritism, or call it what you will, has been able to kill this urge. So here I am with my own blog site and the freedom to write what I wish.

I may not be earning anything from writing here but at least I have got my freedom. No editor of any media house can gag me anymore. I am as free as a bird and I am taking wings. Here I come World! Read me or rack me – but you can’t stop me from writing! Not anymore!