Tarun Tejpal, the inquisitor par excellence is now himself
being pilloried in the media for his “bad lapse of judgment”. This “bad lapse of judgment”, however, comes with its own palliative
– his literary worth, his courageous journalism, his mastery of the art form of
essay, his Midas touch are narrated in the same breath.That makes me feel so
inadequate because I must confess, I have not read anything by Tejpal - essays,
fiction, whatever. As a matter of fact, I do not read any fiction at all.In a
world saturated by 24/7 TV and the ubiquitous print media; we live our lives as
serialized fiction. Or the fictitious world is passed on to us as our very own lived
lives.
Tehelka, we have been told, has been unsparing in its efforts
to expose to the glare of public scrutiny the conduct of the high and mighty
without fear or favour. It did not pull any stops, it even took enormous risks in the pursuit of its objectives. Its stories called a spade not just a spade but a bloody shovel.But,uncharacteristically,Tarun Tejpal’s epistolary
address to his flock before his proposed self exile – self exile, we have all
begun to suspect, is a common
place arty gesture, a regular indulgence-is an exercise in minimalism. When it comes to
describing his own escapades, the writer whose fiction has been described as
“bold,” “sexy,” “sultry,” “sizzling” evokes the literary conventions
and cultural mores of the days gone by, he reduces the horrible incident to the requirements of
staid domesticity. The highly
shattering and traumatic incident of rape has been routinized, reduced to an
embarrassing faux pas rather like getting
into a heated argument with the host at a party or some other breach of decorum
in a domestic setting. Euphemism characterizes the idiom of the powerful;
understatements naturalize the cruelties of power by dissociating the memory of
cruelties from the act itself. Language, among other things, is about naming
objects, about evoking states of being but understatement subverts the natural
association of the word with the mental picture.
There are other reasons why I find the opening
line of Mr. Tejpal so fascinating and worthy of extended analysis. The obscurity
of the message is intended to go over the heads of people outside the Tehelka
cult, should it by chance ever leak
because it could be decoded only if you had
the key. The key was that a rape had taken place, that the rapist was none
other than the pater familas and that
the secret must not get out at any cost. Nor is Tejpal’s
mail to his staffers in the nature of apology; it is not act of contrition; nor
for that matter are these words of repentance. It is sheer power discourse .The
imprecision and obliquity of the text create a sense of moral ambiguity in
order to inscribe in the minds of trusting and supplicating followers the
version of truth that the powerful leader wants them to believe in. What
qualifies to be called rape in the Indian penal code should be taken
merely as a “mild sexual banter”. “Bad lapses of judgment, itself comes
loaded with a whole baggage of memory, promises of reward and implied threat. The
counterfactual has not been stated - what are the dividends of a shrewd reading of
the situation, of a proper exercise of judgment. What a pity that the unspoken
but clearly understood mantra of
success, “This is the easiest way to keep your job” had to be made explicit to
the unfortunate girl.
Tejpal then goes on to remind them of what Tehelka is
what the membership of this group means, and how he built this institution with
his blood etc. Will they not excuse him this small little “drunken sexual
banter”? He was even willing to recuse himself for six months and, impressed by
her ability at damage control, hand over the leadership of cult Tehelka in
“more capable hands “of his deputy Shoma Chaudhary.
His trust in Shoma was not misplaced. She had not imbibed the
Tehelka culture of double standards and hypocrisy in vain. When it came to
fighting the biggest battle in the life of Tehelka, she betrayed her young,
inexperienced but brave colleague to the demands of expediency. She tried to hush up the scandal as being an
internal matter-a stance that is reminiscent of a James Thurber fable, wherein
a Fox charged of eating up a rabbit says, “He is eaten and digested, so it is
an internal matter.”
Tehelka’s - soi disant (?) - moral authority is
rooted in the fact while holding a mirror to the other three estates; it can
pass the strictest public scrutiny in terms of its own impartiality, even
handedness and fair play. It failed this test miserably. As the Tehelka story is unraveled layer by
layer-it’s funding and ownership is already a subject of some curiousity- we
must prepared to be disappointed. This was one more false prophet; we have once
again been fooled into mistaking a garden variety cabbage for a rose!
