In the middle of such momentous events when the future conduct of the most powerful country in the world is the issue in the most bitterly fought Presidential Election that one can remember, and a grisly attempt is being made to decide the future of a proud people by self-declared liberators who think democracy can be ordered at the point of a gun or rained down as the modern manna from heaven in the shape of bombs and missiles that kill innocent women and children (euphemistically called “collateral damage”), in the middle of all this it would seem churlish to be complaining about one’s column being tampered with by the copyreaders. But that is what I am going to do and, in the words of a certain Prime Minister, I am not going to apologise for it.
It is precisely because I choose my words precisely that I resent others changing them and then presenting them in my name.
I am late with my column this month not because I have suddenly developed writer’s cramp but because I have been wondering whether there is any point in trying to say something meaningful if it is, knowingly or otherwise, going to be distorted to mean something else or rendered just plain meaningless.
The difference between a reporter and a columnist is that a reporter can be “subbed” to suit the requirements of the paper, but a columnist is an independent beast jealous of his views and the words he uses to express them. No columnist worth his salt can allow his views to be diluted or changed. You remove a comma here or a clause there and you have damaged his goods.
Admittedly, a columnist, in his turn, must say nothing that will bring the paper into disrepute, or make statements which could be defamatory. That having been said, plain speaking which often leads to controversy is the lifeblood of a dynamic column.
This is a plea not only on behalf of my fellow columnists who may have suffered the same fate with their texts, but also on behalf of my readers who suffer the distortion and curse the columnist.
My association with and admiration for The Hindustan Times goes back to early 1940s when, as an undergraduate at Allahabad University, I used to look forward to the leading article and the Shankar cartoon. So I did not need much persuasion when approached to write for it. But I made one vital condition: that my text will not be tampered with. In the unlikely event of my writing something that goes against the grain of the paper, it could issue the usual disclaimer, but not change the text.
My on-line editor assures me that he has conveyed my strong feelings on the subject more than once but the copyreaders in Delhi continue to wreak havoc on my text. “OF SNAILS, SLUGS AND HOMO SAPIENS”, an intentionally cryptic title of one of the columns, becomes “OF SNAILS AND HOME SAPIENS” rendering it utterly meaningless. The list could fill another column but I have not the heart to inflict my pain on my readers.
What broke the proverbial camel’s back and compelled me to make this the subject of my current column was the omission, in my last column, of a vital sentence. I was talking about Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and I had written: “Gandhi’s death makes assassins of all of us. We killed him. We arranged the killing. The assassin only fired the shots. No amount of crocodile tears we shed afterwards can wash away the shame…….” And now the omission: “We put out the light and then put out the light, and we cried that the light had gone out of our lives.”
Now I may not be the world’s cleverest wordsmith, but I thought that was a rather poetic juxtaposition of Shakespeare and Nehru, both accomplished practitioners of the English language. My copyreader has obviously read neither, or he/she would have known that the first clause in the omitted sentence is almost a direct quote from OTHELLO where the jealous Moor is just going to murder his innocent wife Desdemona in her sleep, and the second is a direct quote from Nehru’s broadcast lament on the death of Mahatma Gandhi. You can understand my lament!!!
I think the paper owes it to me to print my last column in full without changing any punctuation or words.
And now in a lighter vein, and as a sop to my copyreaders, I reproduce below some nuggets I picked up from the internet on the same page that gave John Kerry’s genealogy who, according to Burke’s Peerage no less, is a kinsman of the Shi’ite Shahs of Persia (The most famous was Shah Abbas 1, my namesake, who reigned from 1587 to 1629), as well as of the Muslim kings of Tunisia, all of whom, Democratic presidential nominee included, descend, claims Burke’s Peerage, from the Prophet!! Well, I don’t know about that. But it certainly makes Kerry a fellow Sayyid. So, welcome to the club, Sayyid John Forbes Kerry. I wish you Good Luck. But do not misunderestimate (sic) George W Bush
Oh yes, the nuggets:
- How do you get Holy Water? By boiling the Hell out of it!
- What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A nervous wreck, of course!
- And did you know, dear copyreader, that Santa’s helpers are not subordinate clauses?
Normal service will be resumed next month
-Yavar Abbas
Date: 26th October, 2004