Streetfighter

LONG before he became the famous crusading editor — unravelling l’affaire Bofors, taking on the might of Amma’s wrath — ...

LONG before he became the famous crusading editor — unravelling l’affaire Bofors, taking on the might of Amma’s wrath — Narasimhan Ram was a first class cricketer. Literally. A wicket keeper and batsman, he captained the Madras University team and played for Tamil Nadu in the Ranji Trophy in 1966. Among his contemporaries were S. Venkatraghavan and B.S. Chandrashekhar, later to become legends in test history.

Ram could have gone their way but had to make a choice — professional cricket demanded single-minded zeal while he, even back then, had an appetite for multiple passions. He had stood first in MA history at Madras University and enjoyed academics. And as scion of the venerable Kasturi & Sons media family, journalism was in his genes.

But when he went to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, environment moulded him more than ancestry. Those were heady days. Anti-Vietnam War protests and the Black Power movement were at their height, and young radicals mushroomed in campuses across the world. Ram’s ‘‘Class of ’68’’ was full of them.

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For him it was no passing fad. On returning home, he started Radical Review. P. Chidambaram, a friend from ‘‘baby school’’, was a co-founder but ‘‘quickly had other ideas and left’’. In 1969, during the famous Hindu strike Ram stood firmly by the side of the striking workers and in 1970 became vice-president of the left-wing SFI.

For the next few years he did ‘‘various things’’ — fulltime SFI work, part time research for a PhD — and eventually returned to journalism and the family through his old love, cricket. His uncle and Hindu editor G. Kasturi asked him to cover the 1974-75 West Indies tour of India. ‘‘That was a great tour, Viv Richards made his debut,’’ says Ram, recalling each nuance of that memorable series.

The Emergency underlined the importance of a vigilant press, and that may have impelled Ram to make journalism his primary vocation from 1977 on — as associate editor of The Hindu till 1990, its Washington correspondent in 1980-82, editor of Frontline, Sportstar and Businessline, and since, June 27 this year, editor-in-chief of The Hindu.

In this era of sensational sound bytes, Ram stands out as an old-fashioned journalist — placing his faith in solid (some would say stolid) reportage, painstaking investigations and measured opinion. But he is no ivory tower editor. His interests range across a wide spectrum — history and politics, dogs and parrots (his latest hobby), western classical music and literature.

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He co-authored, with his former wife Susan, the biography of R.K. Narayan and his favourite authors include Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Saul Bellow and Kenzabuo Oe. Among Indian novels in English Raj Kamal Jha’s The Blue Bedspread is a particular favourite.

From a black and white perspective, Ram may seem a paradox. He is an ardent leftist who is also a wealthy newspaper baron; a fierce opponent of majoritarian communalism who shares a cordial rapport with Vajpayee and Advani; a journalist who takes on the Establishment yet retains an abiding faith in the institutions of state; and a consistent champion of the underdog who is a long time breeder of pedigreed pups (Sonia Gandhi and Subramanian Swamy own Ram-bred retrievers.)

According to friends and colleagues, Ram manages to transcend these contradictions because of the sincere passion he imbues his varied interests with. Be it Bofors or Beethoven, Sri Lanka or Sinology, Narayan or nuclear policy — Ram is an aficionado, not a dilettante.

Born on May 4, 1945 Ram is pushing 60. But as Jayalalitha learnt last week, that long ago cricketer — with his unflinching gaze at each approaching ball, his love for stylish strokeplay — is very much alive in him.