D Murali Journalist

His revolutionary idea of inviting CEOs to his office and doing open air interviews at Nageswara Rao Park found favour as he rolled out 100s of insightful interviews but a whistle blower act raising issues of 'Racial and Gender' Prejudice cost the CA rank holder his job at Business Line

Can we, as men, decide to raise our individual voice, rather than keep quiet, when gender injustice happens in front of our eyes? Can we rise above our individual interest and blow the whistle when gender prejudice grabs the air time and pollutes the work atmosphere around us - D Murali in an audio address a year after his exit

The bigger and long-term risk is not standing up right then when something is not right

It is the period of the lockdown and as I went back in time this week, I chanced upon something that was saddening. But as I unraveled the story over the next 24 hours, I began to salute the man whom I had known professionally for close to two decades. This story is about one who was ahead of time as a journalist and whose bold revolutionary tale hit road blocks mid way. Unmindful, he  resurfaced and has cheerfully survived the decade after. 
    
CA rank holder D Murali joined The Hindu’s new financial daily Business Line very early on in its journey in 1996 – within two years of the paper’s launch. A Chartered Accountant, he launched many new sections in the financial daily that by itself were new to financial journalism in the city – topics that were close to his heart at that time – Taxation, Accountancy and the like.

Very soon, his innovative thoughts got the better of him. He launched a section called ‘60 secs chief’, where the CEO of a firm had to answer questions that a reader could read in 60 seconds. It soon became a big hit with several CEOs featuring in it. He followed it up with several new sections (Number Crunch, Swati CA, Books2Byte and so on) that he anchored for many years.

 

It dawned on him that the views of the experts in the corporate world had to be captured and presented to the audience. That he saw as his role. 

Not often in the city was a company CEO invited to media houses for discussions. For long, it has been the practice of the writers to visit the CEO at his office and not the other way around. Murali wanted to break that myth. He wondered if the idea would work and if the CEOs  would accept an invitation for a chat at his desk on their company and the industry.

The result must have surprised Murali even beyond his wildest dreams for he began to host several CEOs at his desk at The Hindu Group’s headquarters in Madras each day of the year. Companies ranged from the several decades old traditional firms to young new born start ups. Murali made it his definitive model. He video recorded the interviews and posted them online. It was disruptive. It was unheard of in the past.

Corporate Interviews at Nageswara Rao Park

When Sundaram Finance launched the mikeless Sunday Kutcheri in the Park, Murali was present early morning on Sundays to capture the presentation of the budding musical talent. Taking on this concept of events at the park, Murali experimented with the idea of ‘interviews at the park’ as his evening interviews moved to the park. He would meet personalities at the chess square of the Nageswara Rao Park, amidst the chirping birds and record their stories (https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/IT-is-a-critical-innovation-lever/article16481002.ece).

Biz Ed of HT @ BL

One day, this writer brought along N Madhavan, the business editor of The Hindustan Times to meet Murali at his office (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pfjfKkxFro). The interview left Madhavan stunned. He remarked that even in the North and the West (of India) such a concept had not been thought of. 

Keep the PRs away - his colleagues tell him
At press conferences, Murali brought his now famous tripod to shoot the CEO's address. Suddenly, in a matter of a few years, Murali had interview several 100s of CEOs and posted those online. The visiting CEOs to his office increased manifold and that raised eyebrows amongst his colleagues. Following this, PR execs were rejected entry into his meetings!!!

Co-authoring stories for BL

During this period, Murali asked if this writer would be interested in co - authoring stories for the paper. And thus I came to write a number of joint stories with him for different sections of the paper in a very short period of time. The pace of the stories was mind boggling. But it was short lived and came to an abrupt end. To date, this writer has not asked him the reason!!!

Through those early days of his innovative journalistic model in the 2000s, Murali was clear. He did not consider himself an expert. Repeatedly he told me this during the many professional interactions I had with him during his period with Business Line.  What he was looking for in his interactions with industry folks was for their thought leadership - among entrepreneurs, authors, and domain experts, across industry verticals. And he considered it his responsibility to showcase their insights through his stories.

Murali was not possessive about the personalities he met and threw that thought process out of the window and sent open invitations to his colleagues to join him for his daily meetings. Surprisingly, very few took up his offer. It was a case of missed opportunities.

The Unceremonious Exit from BL

And then on the morning of the Kutcheri in the Park in September 2012 (http://sundaykutcheri.blogspot.com/2012/09/sahana-presents-sunday-kutcheri.html), he broke the news to me at the Nageswara Rao Park that he was no more with BL. I did not ask him the reason then or his future plans.

As I now look back at the years following his exit, when he was present at the Sunday Kutcheri in the Park and the Sundaram Finance Mylapore Festival, there were no signs of remorse in him, during that period. 

His video model continued uninterrupted and has gained momentum over the last decade. He has always been at his cheerful best. Sometimes, one finds him past 10 pm at the Marina walking to keep himself fit. To date, he has posted several thousand interviews and posts online ranging from corporate stories to Art, from Chamber stories to chats with the cab driver in the Himalayas. And he  continues to be a regular at the corporate briefings and elsewhere.

For a man so used to attending press briefings and seminars day in day out, this lockdown in 2020 should have been a dampener being stuck to the confines of his home. Not for Murali, for he has always found an innovative way to make life interesting for himself and useful for others. In the period of the lockdown, he has been creating educative video content for Sanskrit learners, via chanting of the Srimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapuranam (https://lnkd.in/fBiPVQA?trk=public-post_share-update_update-text) and Valmiki Ramayanam (https://lnkd.in/fHAe6DB?trk=public-post_share-update_update-text). Earlier he had created a similar educative video on Sundara Kandam (Ramayanam). Given the impact of the lockdown, Murali wonders if some of the big corporate seminars / events and even the press conferences would happen again anytime in the near future. He says ‘Doubtful’!!! And is of the view that both the corporates and the journalists will have to prepare themselves for a different model of interaction as they go forward into the life after Corona.

8 years later - The Breaking News to me

I did not ask him for several years on his reason for his exit from BL, given that he seemed to be doing well churning out stories each day of the year for the paper. And then this month, quite accidentally during the lockdown, I landed up on his page and found a story (on his home page) that I had co-authored with him for BL well over a decade ago. Also, I found emails that were exchanged between him and the promoter owner of Business Line, his group email to the staffers of Business Line and an audio recording of the BL Editor's command to him. The entire sequence of events and the final exit shook me completely. 

 

In the hours and days that have passed since, I lay in shock, shaken after reading through the sequence of events that led to his exit. And I went back and looked at some of my own blog stories I had written over the last decade on issues similar in philosophy to what he had brought up - a story that I posted at 3 am, a couple of hours after that dreadful night of January 16/17, 2017 when the Adyapakas of Thiruvallikeni went slow on the Prabhandham recital as a way of protest against the priests (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2017/01/parthasarathy-koil-adyapakas-arrogance.html) and another story on how vested interests were destroying cricket in TN (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/01/tn-ranji-cricket-fall.html).

Explaining our role in life

He tried to fight for a cause that he believed in strongly, unmindful of the consequences ( he says he knew what he was getting into but did what he thought was the right approach to life). After 16 years at BL, he was not given a farewell and hence subsequent to his exit, he took to an audio address, where he explains, beautifully, the burning issues around us that should touch the hearts of each one of us and that we as humans should be concerned with.

He says that his forced exit was abrupt because of a whistle-blowing exercise he had undertaken through a group email (to all staffers) within the newspaper raising issues of gender and racial prejudice by a Senior Editor who was also part of the Editorial Management Committee at that time (Malayalis and Women should not be part of the work force at Business Line is what the Sr. Editor had told Murali in an official meeting).

I wondered as to why a man with 16 years in the firm had to send a mail to all the staffers of the newspaper.

But as I listened, 8 summers after the episode, to the audio address, presented in fluent English, I felt proud that a man who I had known and respected for many years was ready to live by his principles and even risk a high paying job on grounds of principle. I wondered as to how many would have it in us to take such a call in life.

The BL Editor's direction to Murali
In his audio address, he says his boss (D Sampath Kumar, the then Editor of Business Line) asked him something very inhuman and immoral “Why should you be agitated (about gender prejudice)? You are not a Malayali! You are not a woman!”  his boss told Murali all those years ago. In his room, the Editor directed Murali to hand him immediately a written apology for his group email and to also 'announce' in that letter that the paper stood for gender and racial rights. Murali refused, instead he handed The Editor a leave letter and walked out of the room with what he later called as a 'Valuable Recording' ( he had audio recorded the comments of The Editor) that now stands the test of time and proof of what happened inside the closed room that day in 2012.

Alas, what a retrograde thinking! Murali said of this above comment of The Editor “If this be our thinking, as Tamils, why should you be agitated with what happens to Biharis or Gujaratis? As Indians, why should you be worried about the atrocities in other countries? Should Asia be bothered about the crisis in Europe? Why at all should the Americans lose sleep over hunger in Africa?”

He says that there is a greater realisation now that the good of all is what is good for oneself “Health and development mean a lot to all of us as much as air and water. And, to repeat the eternal Karmic message, what goes around, comes around.”

He asks “Can we, as men, decide to raise our individual voice, rather than keep quiet, when gender (and racial) injustice happens in front of our eyes? Can we rise above our individual interest and blow the whistle when gender prejudice grabs the air time and pollutes the work atmosphere around us?

Whistle Blowing without Team Support?

'Blowing a Whistle' is a risky proposition as Murali found out under a decade ago, especially if you did not have the support of your colleagues. No one in the organisation seemed to support Murali during that phase. Yet, it was a philosophical call he took for he believed then that 'the bigger and a long-term risk is not standing up right then when something is not right.' Another man would have been shattered at the manner of his exit from a newspaper but not Murali. While he did not seem to garner any support at the time of his exit, he seemed to have had no regretful look back at the past for he eased himself into other exciting things in life. For people with clarity, life becomes easy.

Colleagues did not support him then but are now part of his whatsapp group!!!

Interestingly, he has in the recent past brought together hundreds of journalists (many of his colleagues who kept quiet after his group email all those years ago are now part of this group formed by Murali!!! thats the way life works?) in a whatsapp group where he alerts them with news of the day as it happens. Many including TV channels have used his alerts to lead with their news. Such has been his contribution to the field of Journalism staying always ahead of time.

This journalist stood his ground for what he believed was a right cause taking a principled stance on an issue he considered was of high importance at the work place. Very few in life exchange a high paying job with 'Philosophy'. Once upon a time, D Murali did!!!