Tiger's Trail

Raju Korti
"You are the editor of a paper that has had a long string of  illustrious names to its credit including mine", Bal Thackeray said to me, his index finger almost drilling a hole into my chest. The characteristic mischievous glint that his eyes revealed through his tinted glasses too was unmistakable, as if to make me conscious of the most unique address of the publication I worked for from its hallowed portals -- The Free Press Journal.
Of the two audiences I had with this rather charismatic man, who had arrogated to himself the pompous sobriquet of "Hindu Hridaysamraat" somewhere in the midst of his turbulent political sojourn from the mid-sixties neo-natal period of the monolithic Shiv Sena, one was incidental and the other consequential.
Sometime in 1972, I remember how Bal Thackeray -- yet to be Balasaheb then -- was chased down in Nagpur by lumpens of the Students Federation of India after he delievered a speech full of acidic barbs at the Communists he had rabid dislike for, at a college student's rally. An unfazed Thackeray boarded the car that was to take him to the airport, but not before he had whipped out a pistol and looked back at the mob menacingly, making no bones that it wouldn't provoke him much to pull the trigger. I recall how the mob stopped in its track and then beat a hasty retreat. Etched vividly, I then had little inkling that thirty-two years hence, my profession would bring me face-to-face with the same man, who now preferred to be attired in saffron robes, a "rudraaksh maala" around his neck, than the customary pant-shirt and the ubiquitous pipe between his lips.
The FPJ photographer Sanjit Sen, who was perhaps having a dekko at Thackeray for the first time, flitted his photo angles -- bending and straightening -- in a flurry of movements with schoolboyish enthusiasm. Turning his head towards him, Thackeray snapped his sardonic humour: "Lungicha photo kaadhtoys ki pungicha?" That sharp repartee also made me realise that because of the chaste Marathi I broached the conversation with him, it didn't occur to him to check my Marathi-turned Kannada antecedents.
In the meeting that unwinded well over three hours, I realised Thackeray carried a strange thought process of a politician and a statesman, but I wasn't interested in knowing the political leanings of the man as much as I wanted to delve deep into his mind. His cartoons, borne out of a razor-sharp mind, keen observation, his abiding interest in Literature and his organisational skills were more important to me than his much bandied image as a man who ignited Marathi Asmita given his penchant to use language as a powerful weapon to mobile a section of people or, for that matter, to strike terror into the minds of the "overbearing, dominating south Indians.
The late nineties, especially the post Sena-BJP coalition government in Maharashtra, his party, often accused rightly or wrongly, as "remote controlled" and run by a man who never made any secret of his preference for "benevolent dictatorship", had seen the emergence of Shiv Sena as a party of goons who couched their love for Mumbai in the name of Marathi and Hindutva. A party that had squandered away its electoral advantage with its ruffian ways.
Yet, in all this confusing melee, there was Thackeray who had a plausible rationale for all his apparently contradictory and self-defeating stances. "I will do what my conscience tells me, everything else be damned", was his thinking philosophy. That, if any, explained why he chose to take even Advani and Vajpayee head on knowing fully well it could screw up the party's political equations with ally BJP, his surprise dinner invitation to Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad at his residence Matoshri and the much pooh poohed and criticised programme of pop star Michael Jackson.
"So what? you mean to say I should kow tow to people because of their pre-eminent status? I run a party on my own ideology. Let people poke ridicule at me. If someone doesn't believe in me, they are free to get out lock stock and barrel," Thackeray told me. "I have given my blood and sweat to conceive this party. Not for nothing the thousands of Shiv Sainiks rise at my one finger tip. If that means I am a rabble rouser, so be it."
Remember, those were the times when Chhagan Bhujbal had engineered a split in the Shiv Sena and a bigger dent in Thackeray's pride. Having covered that turmoil in the party as The Hindu reporter, I could understand, though not appreciate, the kind of venom Thackeray would spit at almost every rally, often deriding Bhujbal as Lakhoba Lokhande and an unforgivable traitor. The same anger and hatred was in evidence when Narayan Rane, who he helped to become the chief minister of "his Maharashtra", deserted to join ranks with the Congress. As someone who could deliver a speech good enough to be described as a litterateur's delight, he could also stoop to sneer at Rane with a "dedh footiya." To that extent, he was a complete spectrum, who could switch ends with similar love or hatred.
"I was, am and will remain a great admirer of "Pu La" Deshpande. I have visited and revisited his writings for as much times as I can remember, but he trained his guns on us at our own award-giving function." Though that unsavoury spat left a bitter taste in the Marathi man's mouth and was headlined as a label-head "One Marathi icon Vs Another Marathi Icon" by a superficial English Press, I can vouch it was the fury of a man who felt wronged. And before this provokes anyone to jump to conclusions, I remember having written a rasping column running down Thackeray and lauding "Pu La" for the dignified silence that he kept throughout later and refusing to be drawn into what could have been a long-drawn verbal skirmish. The irony of it all was, as a keen Thackeray follower, I was well aware of his literary credentials.  
The incongruity similarly showed when Thackeray, after roundly criticising the Congress on the issue of Enron, towed the same line in an expedient somersault. Even Sachin Tendulkar got a dose of the Thackeray medicine. The fact that someone with an avowed pro-Marathi ethos could lose his base or standing among his own constituncy, made little difference to the patriarch, who was well seized that it was his word against anything else. That to me was the USP of Thackeray. He would madly love or intensely hate the same person. Hate him or love him for that! Misplaced though at times it was, it was this stranglehold on the public pulse that gave him this authority and power. And he drew from that bank without fear and most of the times, with favour. While other politicians drank behind their khadi masks and Gandhian hypocrisy, Thackeray had no inhibitions and drank beer or wine donning saffron robes.
"As a schoolboy, I would make a scramble to lay my hands on Maarmik, your cartoon-based Marathi weekly. You lampooned your rival politicians relentlessly. Big time politicians of that era shivered you would caricature them. But why did you relegate such an incisive and evocative craft to the caprice of popular politics? You were the country's best cartoonist, notches above RK Laxman," I asked him. Thackeray looked pained for a moment and conceded that he could have given it more devotion, but "I had more pressing missions at hand, I had to decide my priorities", the obvious explanation why his collection of cartoons got assimilated into a coffee-table book towards the fag end of his life.
But true to his "values", he never carried his regrets as baggage. Those who accuse him of playing a blind but doting Dhritarashtra -- while elevating son Uddhav as the party's executive head in preference to his more competent and on-the-same track nephew Raj -- often skip the fact that he also disowned youngest son Jaidev for his philandering ways and never ever bothered to get him back into his fold. Thackeray couldn't care less that criticism could ricochet on him for promoting dynasty politics when he routinely hurled the same refrain at Congress.
Most of my meeting with the old man, ever so young at heart and so quick on the uptake, was centred around matters not relating to politics since I did not want to succumb to the temptations of writing a clique-ridden, rhetorical copy that most editors seek from their staffers to tickle people. At the end of it, I found that within the Thackeray most people had seen and heard, lived another Thackeray, who was warm, affectionate and helping. Was the Thackeray who helped Sanjay Dutt, Amitabh Bachchan the one people knew or I (preferred to) understand? Conjecturing may be an art I may have honed as a journalist, but I will keep it on the back-seat for now.
All I know is he genuinely loved Raj and had intended to groom him as his obvious heir. Raj had all the trappings he would expect as his natural successor -- the firebrand oratory laced with puns, mimicry, cartoon craft, the way to graft popularity and just about everything that was "Balasaheb." Then at what point did Raj fall from grace? As I bore, no speculations for me.
I would rather recall and feel the warmth of his hand on my back and I am sure on his part he didn't think of me as an owl either -- if you know what I mean.

Jai Hind, Jai Maharashtra