Shy sage of publishing

There aren’t many publishers as committed to their vocation or as ready for challenges.

There were four of us who travelled to Delhi University on the U Special, every day in the late Sixties: Madhoor Kapur, Arati Kaul, Bunny (“I dare you to call me TS,” he joked quite recently) and myself. He was turbaned, then, and mostly silent during the long ride to College — Bunny was the shyest towering figure I had ever met. He opened up gradually, and then our bus rides weren’t nearly as long, as we talked about all sorts of things. Books, and teachers, and tutorials — and theatre. He didn’t act, then, though, except when Madhoor insisted that we all take part in his Happening at Triveni! Bunny’s turban identified him immediately.

After St. Stephen’s, he took off for Balliol (Oxford) and I left for the US, but continued to receive long, happy letters from him saying that finally, he was “learning History as she should be taught”.

Bunny was one of a group of young men and women who entered Indian publishing in the 1970s, when most of our contemporaries were joining the civil services, academia or the corporate world.

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He rose to become one of its most successful, and professional, practitioners; initially with Macmillan & Company, later and finally, with Sage India, which he founded in 1983.

When, by chance, we found that we had both returned to India and joined publishing houses, I teased him about going to work with the Brit — and he ribbed me for being stupidly “nationalistic”. A thoroughgoing perfectionist that he was, he mastered the business, as well as the art and craft of publishing while at Macmillan, then put everything he had learnt to great use at Sage.

At lunch in a Chinese restaurant around the corner from his office in M Block, Greater Kailash I, we told him about our plan to start a feminist publishing house. His eyebrows shot up. “Whoa! girls,” he said, “have you done your market research? Will you get enough good manuscripts?”

He looked concerned when we said “no,” to the first and “we hope so,” to the second. And so he advised us to diversify, which we’d but not in the way he meant!

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He himself built up a formidable list, and a formidable reputation, by diversifying into areas like development studies, the environment, management sciences, and media and communications; and there was no question that each was preceded by a careful assessment of the market, and meticulous follow-up.

There aren’t many publishers these days as committed to their vocation as Tejeshwar was, and even fewer who relished a challenge as much as he did. One of the last messages in my mailbox on Friday was from him. “Thursday, 20th, at 11, your office fine by me,” in order to finalise a project we were working on collectively.

Oh, Bunny. I didn’t think that two days later I would be writing your obituary.

Ritu Menon is a Delhi-based publisher