Lucknow Boy, an encyclopedia

On life, on journalism.

I first came to know Vinod Mehta as the most hated media figure in India. At least the letters section of 'Outlook' magazine gave that impression. I am not sure if the writers of those letters demanded exactly the public stoning of Mehta to death, but the connotation of those letters used to be something like that. Particularly after the 'heretic' mega-essays of Arundhati Roy appeared in Outlook (that they still do periodically), the letters section of the magazine would be deluged with such letters.

While most other Indian weeklies looked visibly elated by how India was rising and shining over the first decade of the new century, I used to be more fascinated by the supposedly 'leftist' fortnightly 'Frontline' whose portrayal of Indian society looked to me more realistic and scholarly. Yet there was this third magazine, the weekly Outlook that treaded a path somewhere in between: portraying India sometimes with alacrity, sometimes with caution; sometimes with elation and sometimes with gloom.

So, who was this man behind a kind of journalism in India that didn't fit into either ideological framework (of socialism and untamed capitalism)? How could this man publish nauseating letters that viciously attacked himself in pages of his magazine; those too in dozens?

These were few among many questions that awaited answers before reading 'Lucknow Boy: A Memoir' the autobiography of Vinod Mehta who is currently the chief editor of Outlook group of publications in India. After reading the last pages, it turns out, I have learned more than I expected at the beginning.

If I am not sufficiently fooled, Mehta is starkly honest with himself while writing these words. Second, the book gives rare insight into the workings of apparently magnificent but really perilous media industry in India. What touched me more than that was, however, the insight he gives on how he dealt with ups and downs in life. The omnipresent wit and humor of the author makes the book all the more pleasant and readable.