Journalists are prepared for bad news round the clock. But not the kind I got today. Barely had I finished reading the papers in the morning I got a call saying Shailender S Dhawan, my predecessor who had held the post for almost continuously since July 31, 2008, was no more. He had vacated his office only in April this year, barely six months ago. He died of congestive heart failure. To colleagues and friends who knew him well, this is code for broken heart disease. His heart broke because he could no longer do what he liked best: bring out another FPJ edition with hooks for headlines on the front page, the best page of the day. Shailen obsessed about headlines, holding the page till he got the right one. Sometimes I wondered what would happen if he didn’t get the right headline, but that was never.
I had known Shailen from the last century, the early nineties. We had joined Vinod Mehta’s The Pioneer, the paper Rudyard Kipling had worked for, when Vinod launched it in Delhi, Shailen as Acting Chief Sub-editor and me as Senior Sub-editor in charge of the foreign features page. Both had been what we call desk jockeys. Shailender arrived at the office in a peculiarly green colored Bajaj scooter, wearing a full shirt which he tucked in under his ample belly. Quite a lot of shouting usually emanated from the news desk, usually over headline accidents and choice of stories. It is par for the course. Shailen lost his cool when Sri Harsha identified Bosnia-Herzegovina as Serbia-Herzegovina in the headline of the lead story. But that was also par for the course, where tempers frayed in a newspaper that was trying to be different in vast ocean of newspaper sameness and where Vinod Mehta hurled the choicest of epithets whenever something went colourfully wrong in the headline. Those days Shailen lost his cool often.
When Serendipity made me catch up with Shailen again in 2023, he had taken to wearing Pathan Suit, and a walking stick reclined on the desk by his side. I’d been scouting for writing opportunities. How long have you been in Mumbai? he’d asked. Two years I said. What took you so long? he almost shouted, and then interjected, Anyway, your timing couldn’t be better! And made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. That was the kind of person he was. He was open to Life. Dhawan was an editor beyond compare. He had worked his way up the newsroom, a rarity, when most editors usually have field experience.
In the FPJ they called him Pappaji. He had been around longer than anyone else. He’d joined in September 2005. Some referred to him as Shailey. Or was it Shelly, after Percy Bysshe? I am inclined towards the latter. Simply because Shailen gave incomparable headlines that from some angles looked like sheer poems. After eight people died in a blast in Dombivili and 64 were injured in May 24, 2024, BANG, BANG greeted the FPJ readers. In December the same year after Gukesh Dommaraju dethroned Ding Liren, Shailen broke the news outrageously, if tastily: SAMBHAR OUTWITS CHOWMEIN. Being a south Indian I recoiled instinctively at the intrusive `h’, others recoiled, both from joy and delight and the horror of it. Shailen chuckled endlessly over the debate it generated. People are talking about FPJ, aren’t they? he’d countered smugly. Shailen was partial to Hindi when it came to headlines. PHATA ORDINANCE, NIKLA HERO Shailen declared giving many meanings at several levels when Rahul Gandhi tore apart an ordinance of Manmohan Singh in a studied tableau of defiance. Shalen reveled in his knowledge of both Hindi films and sports. Here is one from July 16, 2022 D(H)ARNA MANA HAI. Or it’s E (EKNATH) D(EVENDRA) GOVT, from July 5 the same year. Go on, flip the FPJ e-paper archives at random, its free.
Shailen at his desk was like an AWACS picking up tidbits and odd spars of information far beyond the visible range, information that he alone spotted and souped up for Page 1. Everyday he fussed over the Page 1 anchor, or bottomspread as it was known. And what he called the Taipliece, often a tantalizing morsel of a news offering. He was a hoarder, taking prisoner stories he thought worthy of Page 1, far more stories than the page could accommodate and not release them to other pages till late night. He was always scanning for the latest news, holding the page, deadline be damned; he wanted the best and latest for the FPJ reader. Almost invariably, he was the last to leave the office. He left the television blaring all the time.
He always talked about his dog Ace, his golden retriever.
Dog Ace |
We are perennially short-staffed and in Mumbai it is tough to find desk hands and I once I suggested, Why don’t we hire Ace? His English is probably better than most people we test, and Ace understands and obeys commands. Shailen thought about it for a moment, a distant gleam appearing behind his steel framed spectacles. Then he began to laugh. When Shailen laughed, which was often, his whole massive frame convulsed with laughter. It took a long time for it to subside, like a mother quake followed by many little children quakes. I never got around to ask him why he called Ace Ace. Probably after his love for conspiracy theories and gumshoe stories. Shailen never took a story at face value. Never. He always wanted the story behind the story. Most such stories, as FPJ readers well know, are unprintable.
I had been shocked when I met him again in 2023, shortly before the Ganesh festival. Shailen looked enormous. When I joined Koli his driver would bring his bag in for him and Shailen would follow later. Shailen had to make three stops from the lift that had been erected at the portico for him to stand on till he reached his glass cabin on the third floor where he sat with his back to the Arabian Sea overlooking the point where Ajmal Kasab and his cohorts trod water.
The FPJ is probably the only paper in the country with a road named after it. Shailen never let me forget that. We stand for something, he kept saying. It is a bit of an irony that his dream was to work somewhere in the mountains. I guess, as he brought out his beloved newspaper, the Arabian Sea grew in him. He must have died of a broken heart. He would have lived longer if he didn’t have to shift to Chandigarh, near his beloved mountains. I am sure of it. I will ask him for sure, when I meet him in the Big Newsroom in the Sky.
Shailender Dhawan’s wit, warmth, and creative genius that defined The Free Press Journal's front pages.
V Sudarshan is the editor of The Free Press Journal |
