Akbar's era, circa July 2005-Oct 2006

As the floodgates of sexual harassment exposes opened about Mr MJ Akbar, currently Minister of State for External Affairs and arguably one of the last of great editors of India, I am reminded of time I spent as someone who worked with Mr Akbar. My first prominent memory of Mr Akbar’s editorship dates to back to 2005 when I joined The Asian Age as an intern, aspiring to be absorbed as a staffer in Features department. I was promised that after 15 days, my worked would be appraised and accordingly my case would be decided. One and half month passed, there was no clue whether I would be issued an offer letter or merely an experience letter. Though my feature editor was extremely encouraging and liked my work immensely, but perhaps she lacked the courage to ask Mr Akbar to sign the offer letter. Then one day, I reported about some Pakistani dancing girls joining mujra houses at Delhi’s GB Road. The story became instant hit. It was followed by many media outlets, including BBC. Mr Akbar despatched an email to all in The Asian Age appreciating my story and how a good story grabs everyone’s attention. I keep printout of this email as a postcard from memory. The same day, I was issued my appointment letter and was given salary for all working days. Then while working further, many a time I reported about issues which dealt with hardcore news category. When these stories were brought to Mr Akbar’s knowledge, he immediately asked seniors on desk to take them in the news pages of the broadsheet. Though, they were never carried by those desk people because of perhaps some biases or reasons only known to them. Then one day, I suddenly resigned owing to personal reasons, without discussing my decision with my feature editor. Both she and Mr Akbar became furious and shot me livid mails, accusing me of being ‘ungrateful.’ I keep this mail as memory too. A memory of a lesson that if you come from small town, lower middle-class families and are employed and encouraged by your seniors, you should not disappoint them. And deprive yourself a job, an income and a working life in a city. Meanwhile, there were lots of rumours, canteen conversations about Mr Akbar taking chances with young girls of Asian Age. One confirmed story was of a beautiful girl from Luknow who had joined at newsdesk. Mr Akbar wrote some lecherously-worded emails. She showed those mails to two of my colleagues. She reportedly wrote back to Mr Akbar with a firm response that the old lech deserved. His advances stopped right that moment. Soon after she left. While leaving, she shocked two us from Aligarh. She revealed she was married. We kept her email for few years, but never mailed her. I had no curiosity to know any further into these stories. As all working in a national newspaper were adults, both girls and boys. They knew how to deal with unwanted advances, and advance their careers. That’s exactly all did, as per their choices.