Vincent D'Souza Mylapore Times 1991

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. 

MAPS had run out of the colour roll. His eyes lit up when he found the camera and a roll hanging on the dead body of Hari Babu, the man who had captured the explosive moments and whose photographs went on to provide the vital clues in the case.  MAPS was keen to check out if there was a colour roll in the bag. 

MAPS was in a fix to also pick up the camera as it was lying unattended. The temptation was to pick up the camera and the exclusive shots that it contained (and may be hand it to the police or to his organisation). He almost went to pick up the camera from the body of the deceased but let it be (The photographs from that camera went on to be published by The Hindu in the coming days!!! - that's a story for another day).

                       1991 Vikatan Photographer MA Parthasarathy

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.

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.