How Vincent
D’Souza stumped the Vikatan Photographer in the 1991 Rajiv Gandhi bombing episode with a 'STEAL the Camera' Cover Story
It was the night before we (YMCA
TSR) were scheduled to take the Express Train to Bangalore for the annual
Brijesh Patel Cricket Tournament. And then the news broke of the ghastly
incident 40 kms away. And our cricket trip was cancelled.
That horrendous summer night end of
May 1991, MA Parthasarathy, brother of Vaishnavite Scholar MA Venkatakrishnan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2019/05/ma-venkatakrishnan-thiruvallikeni-divya_16.html),
was one of the few photographers present at the horrendous site in
Sriperambudur when the human bomb went off on Rajiv Gandhi. MAPS (as he is
fondly called by his friends), now a resident of Thiruvallikeni was a key photographer of the Vikatan Group and his
camera clicked the hours following the bombing. His was the only camera to have
captured the gory events in colour.
Vincent stuns The Vikatan Editor
A couple of days later the then
young and the aggressive Vincent D’Souza, then the Madras Correspondent of The
Week magazine (Manorama Group), like many other journalists from across the
world, was at the Vikatan office to meet its Editor Madan to pick up some of
the exclusive photographs that Parthasarathy had captured that night at the
event site.
While Vincent had landed up there
for the colour photographs (and these were featured in his story later that week) that only Vikatan was in possession of, what
he went back that day was with a story that was to leave the Vikatan Editor
furious and stunned in the days to come.
What transpired that morning is
fresh in MAPS’s memory “Vincent was waiting at the reception to meet Madan when I
just entered the office. We casually exchanged info for a few minutes on the
happenings on that dreadful night and I moved on with my work.”
Later that week, much to the shock
of Vikatan’s Editor, a big half page box piece featured as part of the Cover Story in The Week narrating
the experience of this 28 year old Vikatan photographer (MAPS) and how he had
almost gone to ‘STEAL’ the camera from the body of the deceased.
As soon as The Week magazine hit
the stands, MAPS was summoned into his Editor’s room. MAPS remembers the heated
conversation he had with his Editor “Madan
was furious and keen to send a notice to Vincent D’Souza for giving an 'STEALING ANGLE' to an informal casual chat with his photographer.”
After a long conversation, MAPS managed to convince his Editor that
Vincent did what any newsy journalist would have done – create a story out of
juicy information that had come his way by chance.
The Making of Mylapore Times
In June of 1991, Vincent wrote six stories around the death of Rajiv Gandhi for The Week Magazine. Had he stayed
around, it is likely he would have climbed the ladder into Big National and International publications. However, he took a different view.
He resigned as the Special Correspondent of The Week (he was also
reporting for the BBC) to start the Mylapore Times. He said in an interview
about six months ago on his move from renowned media groups at the prime of his
career “The quest for knowing and living with local community in Chennai inspired me to start a neighborhood newspaper and I started the Mylapore Times. It started small and remains small even now but became a powerful print media locally.”
It is that passion that has helped him curate the annual Sundaram Finance Mylapore Festival year on year for almost two decades.
It is that passion that has helped him curate the annual Sundaram Finance Mylapore Festival year on year for almost two decades.
Informative Connect during the Lockdown
It is no easy task to build a community newspaper from scratch and run it successfully for 25 years. It’s that ability to capture the news from around him that has always kept him going. And in this period of the Lockdown, it is that same quest and the persistence of his connect with the local community that has resulted in over 225 stories online in Mylapore Times providing information that the residents of Mylapore are looking for by the hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment