A Study in Pink
Photo: Joydeep Sensarma on Unsplash
Short Story: ‘The pink tabebuia is a picture of quiet grace. It does not impose. Its presence is a welcome respite from a noisy, polluted city perennially draped in tones grey or garish… Was this tree really from here? Were we still in Bangalore?’
When Shashank joined our newspaper last month as its newest desk editor, I struggled to get along with my new colleague as well as I would have liked. As an editor at Prajavani, I was more than fifteen years his senior. Shashank had plenty of free time in the office, since he was still learning the job, which he did by shadowing my own work. Sometimes he paid keen attention, sometimes he appeared distracted, scrolling through Instagram on his phone. His duties were straightforward at first: Whenever I edited a story, he edited the same for practice. In his version, I made notes and marked mistakes, changed a word here, shortened a sentence there.
On one recent afternoon, after reviewing Shashank’s latest work, I went to meet Visalakshi—our chief desk editor—who sat close to the swanky new office of the editor-in-chief. Besides discussing Shashank’s progress, I’ve used these recent meetings with Visalakshi to glean clues about the direction the editing desk at Prajavani is taking. Will the paper hire more young editors? Perhaps take in a couple more Shashanks, and cull two oldies? My usually rock-solid job security had suffered a chink or two since a recent downsizing.
“How are you, Murali? Come to moan about the newbie again?” Visalakshi greeted me with a smile. She had greying-hair, and wore gold-rimmed glasses and a purple silk sari—the complete dignified look of a middle-aged editor.
“Not really, Ma’am,” I said. “The kid is actually doing much better. Miles to go, but I can see he has the right attitude.”
“Very good. That boy has drive. You teach him the right stuff, and we can develop him into a fine editor.”
“I’ll teach him what I can, Ma’am. But not everything can be taught, no?” I said, breaking into a smile. “A certain finesse only comes with experience.”
“Well, that’s exactly why I’ve paired him with you. Hopefully some of that finesse rubs off on the kid.”
I was tempted to ask what would happen to my job once Shashank had extracted all the finesse out of me. I was tempted to tell her I realised there would be no fiscal sense, then, in paying me five times what Shashank was earning. But I simply kept these temptations in check.
*
Many years ago, during a time when Shashank was probably finishing kindergarten, my editors would make notes and edits with Hero pens, a kind of fountain pen popular in those days. Today I have brought with me this special tool of trade, and I hope it will prime my mind for some inspiration.
Almost every evening for the last two weeks, I’ve found myself taking the fifteen-minute walk from the Prajavani office to a leafy area deep inside Cubbon Park, where I dust off a familiar bench and settle down to quietly observe a pink tabebuia tree of great beauty. I stay here for an hour, sometimes longer, with a pen in my hand and an open diary on my lap.
I still retained a positive outlook, but it was hard to shake off a certain feeling that I wasn’t invincible anymore—a hitherto unfamiliar feeling of vulnerability crept in. A youthful confidence had been sapped.
I was writing a poem about this tree.
The last time I wrote any poetry was many years ago, published in a weekly magazine called Sudha, a sister publication to Prajavani. At Sudha, I wrote one poem each week for two years, before my feature was finally shelved. The poems covered everything from political satire to city life. I vividly remember a poem I’d written about the kidnapping of the actor Rajkumar, which elicited wide praise in letters to the editor—something rare for the poetry feature at the time. There was another poem about moral policing that wondered whether the Taliban was running our government. A line from that one somehow made it into the lyrics of a Kannada film song.
Today, I was simply toying with my Hero pen while thinking of new verses. I’ve always enjoyed the easy waltz of a fountain pen on paper. The ink’s fleeting wetness never failed to evoke in me a childish sense of wonder. Sadly, my use of it wasn’t akin to a painter using his preferred brush, or a butcher her favourite knife: a good pen does not a good poem guarantee.
I was still an editor at Prajavani to this day, but Hero pens have long since made an unheroic exit. It had been hard not to wonder whether those days of fountain pens were not linked inextricably with brighter days brighter. This wasn’t mere nostalgia; one is filled with great confidence and ambition at the start of one’s career. I still retained a positive outlook, but it was hard to shake off a certain feeling that I wasn’t invincible anymore—a hitherto unfamiliar feeling of vulnerability crept in. A youthful confidence had been sapped.
After nearly two decades at Prajavani, almost everything seemed to be changing suddenly. While the owners were pouring money into a modernising effort—replacing all the office teak with slick glass and plastic, for instance—a cost-cutting drive has begun in parallel. A quarter of all journalists were let go a few months ago as part of a “workforce realignment”. The 600-word memo from the editor-in-chief had contained more such awkward phrases, and I suspected it was drafted not by him, but by some corporate overlord. The announcement hadn’t been totally unexpected. Other staff, including a friend from our English-language sister paper, had been let go just the week before. Plus, there was always the buzz of layoffs at other Kannada dailies.
These changes took a curious form at our editing desk. First, our six-member team grew to seven. For a short while, we wondered whether we were somehow immune to the cuts. Shashank, who had spent two years reporting for Vijaya Karnataka, became a desk editor.
Soon after that, the desk that grew from six to seven, shrank to four. Three veteran editors were let go. Visalakshi and I survived.
Now, it had been a strange series of occurrences that has made me revisit poetry after all these years. But the immediate trigger for it comes back to me clearly. It happened during an afternoon at Noon Wines two weeks ago, as I nursed a cold glass of KF Premium by myself at a window table. No one visits this grimy pub anymore, except old regulars and the odd visitor stumbling in for a quick bite or drink. Today’s kids fancy glossier establishments. I, of course, understood the mechanics of change. But wasn’t change supposed to be gradual? Its pace over the last few years had been particularly striking, forgetting and discarding treasures of the past like yesterday’s sambar.
In any case, I was quietly sipping my KF that afternoon, when the sight of a pink tabebuia tree across the road arrested me. I could have sworn it hadn’t been there the day before. The tree, with its pink flowers growing in orb-like clusters, stood quietly proud and unconcerned as loud vehicles whizzed past. For a moment, it transfixed me, like the hypnotic flames of a campfire.
How did such an attractive tree find itself here? I had seldom associated my city’s messy roads with this kind of natural beauty. On a whim, I extracted a pen and scribbled a few lines down on a Noon Wines napkin. In English, they would have read something like this:
Thing of uncommon beauty,
I long to discover
How you stumbled
Into this strange jungle
Of smoke and cars
If the street outside were
A cup of fresh, aromatic tea
You are the spoonful of sugar
That enlivens it
I have tried to think about Kannada words for ‘pink’. The most widely used word is sadly also the word for the flower rose. The word I require must mean pink, and pink alone. My nook of the park, being distant from the families, dog walkers and pairs of lovers who frequent it, is a tranquil place to sit and think. Still, I heard the screeches of unknown Bangalore birds (which I welcome) and the distant white noise from that most inescapable of all elements in my beloved city—the traffic—which I must tolerate.
What drew me to the pink tabebuias? Why only this tree? Why not the others? When I tried to distill the answer, I could think only of the flowers’ unique shade of pink. The city’s other flowering trees, like the gulmohar, the bougainvillea, the yellow, blue and lavender tabebuias, are all delightful sights in spring. But when compared with a pink tabebuia, they simply looked too bright.
I, of course, understood the mechanics of change. But wasn’t change supposed to be gradual? Its pace over the last few years had been particularly striking, forgetting and discarding treasures of the past like yesterday’s sambar.
With its softer hue, the pink tabebuia is a picture of quiet grace. It does not impose. Its presence is a welcome respite from a noisy, polluted city perennially draped in tones grey or garish. Even now, when I looked upon it, the tree evoked the same feeling of other-worldly beauty I first experienced at Noon Wines ten days ago: was this tree really from here? Were we still in Bangalore?
Now, if I could only think of an alternate word for pink.
*
When the Indian team had recently begun a tour of Australia, I discovered that Shashank followed cricket a little more than casually. He was exuberant when he discussed the sport, and often broke into a mock spin-bowling action while walking through the office corridors.
I lugged a worn-out shoulder bag to work, while he wore a backpack; I used a trusty old Casio wrist-watch, while he preferred one that could tell his heart rate; I wore sandals, he wore sneakers.
But in cricket, we had a bridge now, a connection between generations, without which he and I would’ve been worlds apart.
“So, what’s the score, Shashank?” I asked as I returned to the office after lunch. “Did Kohli declare the innings yet?”
“No, Sir,” Shashank said. His eyes were glued to the one TV playing the cricket match—and not set to a news channel. “He’s still batting, even after scoring a century.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Kohli springs his magic in the second innings, too, you know, like we saw at the Brisbane match.”
“Yeah, Kohli really let them have it at the Gabba,” Shashank said, using the more common name for the stadium at Brisbane. “But here in Sydney, I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“But it’s summer, man,” I went on, somewhat eager to teach the kid a thing or two and drive my point home. “In Australia, summer falls in December, doesn’t it? Dry, hot conditions, well suited for Kohli to shine with the bat.”
“Sir, the last five tests here have been low-scoring games. And have you seen the weather reports? High humidity. I was in Sydney two years ago around December. This level of humidity can be severe. It will help their spin bowlers, I’m telling you.”
At that point, I dropped the exchange, and asked to see his edits from the day. Dutifully, Shashank returned to his desk to send me the email.
That evening, I made my way as usual to my tree-observing station in the park, and like always, all was tranquil. The only other person there was Manjanna, the old gardener, who was tending to a hedge with a snaky green water hose. He always made a kind enquiry about lunch or coffee when he saw me. “Yes, I had lunch, what about you?” I would reply, to which he would nod yes, and that would be the end of the conversation. Soon these exchanges turned simply into polite nods or waves whenever I went to that corner of the park.
It was the day’s golden hour, and my concrete bench was transformed into a beach chair as I basked in the sunshine needling its way through the canopy of tree branches above. The wind made the tabebuia tree’s soft, pink flowers sway gently against the clear blue sky. The air smelt like recent rain. But the scent was really from the bougainvillea bushes being watered by Manjanna nearby.
*
Yesterday I had another sit down with Visalakshi. “I do like editors who can tackle big stories differently,” I said to her. We were discussing Shashank’s recent work. “Sometimes you have to break the rules and do something different. You can’t write the same old boring headline for a big story. This rule-breaking also requires an editor to be daring enough to take a risk. But if someone takes such risks early on, I’d go as far as calling it a red flag. We don’t want anything that can reflect badly on the paper.”
Visalakshi and I recalled, with mild terror, when we had to stop an Entertainment story from going to press after discovering that a provocative headline had slipped through. Swarnalata, a twice-divorced actress who had separated with those two husbands after they went bankrupt, was now marrying a third time. The headline had said something to the effect of “Wedding Bells: Swarnalata Entraps Third Victim.”
“Yes, we certainly don’t want anything like that. I know which of Shashank’s edits you’re referring to, of course,” Visalakshi said. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw his headline. Of course, we would have never used it.”
Last week, when India beat Australia at Brisbane—the ‘Gabba’—Shashank had done a practice-edit of the story. He binned our sports correspondent’s simple and reliable headline and came up with his own: “Gabba nalli habba!” Loosely translated, it meant “Celebrations at the Gabba!”
“Yes, it’s cute, perhaps, but I wouldn’t have used that headline either,” I told Visalakshi. “It’s a little too … Well, it’s something approaching crass. We, on the other hand, want class.”
Visalakhi nodded in agreement, but I could still sense a certain satisfaction from her at Shashank’s playful headline. Yes, I knew that the boy was creative, his work was fast improving, and he also had a special worldliness about him—although I probably thought of that last quality only because he had visited Australia.
Once again, I was reminded of my diminishing utility to the paper. And once again, I refrained from speaking my mind to Visalakshi.
Instead, I said something stranger. “Ma’am, have you heard about the tabebuias?”
The wind made the tabebuia tree’s soft, pink flowers sway gently against the clear blue sky. The air smelt like recent rain. But the scent was really from the bougainvillea bushes being watered by Manjanna nearby.
“What?”
“They are these wonderful trees that are growing in Cubbon Park. Soft pink in colour, pleasing to look at. They’re blooming all over the city, actually. I don’t know if you’ve seen them around. But when you do, you wouldn’t believe we are in Bangalore. You’re reminded of the cherry blossoms in Japan. I don’t know why this isn’t a bigger thing. So, I was thinking a series of photos would do nicely for the Sunday edition.”
Before she could say anything, I continued: “And along with the photo feature, I was thinking a six-stanza poem might go well. I’ve already written most of it.”
Visalakshi considered this for a moment and agreed to take the pitch to our Sunday editor. If she was even remotely surprised by my emerging from poetry-retirement, to write some random verses about trees, she showed no sign of it.
Immediately I felt the pressure I’d brought upon myself. I was now bound by a professional commitment. I also felt somewhat stupid. It wasn’t as though this one poem would boost my worth to the paper. Who even reads poems in newspapers these days?
I had to brush those feelings aside. I’d intended to write the poem regardless—and now it had found a nice home even before completion.
Visalakshi still had some questions.
“Murali, did you see the Jog Falls this year? You know how beautiful they looked. I got one video on WhatsApp, I’ll show you,” she said, looking at her phone. “What I mean is, if you’re writing about natural beauty, why only these trees?”
“Ma’am, those are the Jog Falls. All of Karnataka knows about them,” I said. “Tell me something. Have you heard of the tabebuia tree before? You may have seen it, but do you know anything else?”
She removed her gold-rimmed glasses and nodded slowly.
*
I rested on my bench, on a new day at the park. The tabebuia stood before me, sublime, graceful. The scent of wet mud wafts. Parrots screeched and other birds sang. The open diary on my lap awaited the last two stanzas to my poem.
There was an unusual burst of activity in my otherwise quiet corner of the park today. A distance from me, two boys and a girl rehearsed a skit or a dance, and a fourth teenager recorded them on his phone. The actors performed vigorous movements, and the director instructed them to do them all over again. Slowly I realised this must be the making of an Instagram Reel.
In Kannada, it means “Caught!” but this English translation hardly does justice. “Ensnared!” is closer to the emotion it conveys. Imagine a man-eating leopard that has terrorised a village and repeatedly evaded capture. Now imagine the jubilation the villagers might feel when the creature is finally seized after a long chase.
One of the boys approached the girl with a rose in his hand; the girl spurns him; more drama ensued. I didn’t bother to make sense of it. Instead, I pictured the Sunday edition of Prajavani with the poem published. My name in print, as a poet. It had been nearly twenty years since my Sudha days.
My thoughts were interrupted by the Reel fellow’s incessant cackling between takes. I wondered if Shashank made Reels, too. Likely.
I wished I could take a more sympathetic view of Shashank and his work. He’s obviously a good chap, but that “Gabba-nalli-habba” stunt was uncalled for. The boy needed to master the rules before he started breaking them.
On the face of it, a headline is easy enough to construct. You provide clear, accurate information about your story. That’s the scientific aspect. But there is also a creative aspect, used to conjure clever or playful headlines the reader can savour. Some of The Times of India’s English-language headlines are often clever but lack that extra component: class. Dhoni’s helicopter shots are entertaining, but that textbook elegance to Dravid’s cover drives make him a greater delight to watch.
I’ve played my own share of helicopter shots back in the day. My first ‘stunt’ headline was a successful endeavour. When I was two years into my role at Prajavani, we were closely following the story of Prakash Hegde, a scammy bureaucrat close to the chief minister. Everybody knew Hegde took kickbacks for government tenders and made dodgy land deals — allegedly. But he always got acquitted for lack of evidence. This man’s ability to routinely come clean, even under the thorniest of allegations, pissed off opposition politicians, investigative journalists, the police and the courts.
So, when Hegde was finally nabbed in a dramatic night raid with what was said to be smoking-gun evidence, it was huge news. We were all over it. Our reporter filed the story at 8 p.m. and it came to me for edits. It was no doubt going to be a front-pager, and probably the biggest story I had edited until then.
Our reporter’s headline—“Prakash Hegde Arrested After Crores in Cash, Jewellery Seized From Home”—was satisfactory. It was adequate. This is often the most reliable way to do headlines. You get nothing wrong, no one is offended, and most importantly, it tells the reader what they must know.
But for big stories, the headline should ideally reflect the intensity of the news. So, I added a new headline. A short phrase: “Sikk-hak-kondru!” In Kannada, it means “Caught!” but this English translation hardly does justice. “Ensnared!” is closer to the emotion it conveys. Imagine a man-eating leopard that has terrorised a village and repeatedly evaded capture. Now imagine the jubilation the villagers might feel when the creature is finally seized after a long chase.
As other editors grouped around my desk discussing the story that night, my boss came over to look at my screen. He didn’t like my headline at all. “Is Prajavani expressing glee at Hegde’s arrest?” he asked. Words like “tabloid” and “insensitivity” were thrown around. He might have been right. But our editor-in-chief overruled him. In the end, five million-odd readers across Karnataka woke up to “Sikk-hak-kondru!” in a screaming, big font, above a photograph of a sombre-looking man being led away by two policemen. The reporter’s original title became the smaller strapline, below the headline.
My motivation to use that headline wasn’t very different from what Shashank was trying with “Gabba nalli habba”. We all want to break the rules and be creative, different, exhibit our cleverness and make readers enjoy reading the news. But my confidence that night came from a sound knowledge of the job.
One should always learn the job first. The chutzpah comes later.
*
I returned to work on Wednesday after a two-day holiday—three, if you count Sunday. I was editing a story about Indira Canteens, but my mind was elsewhere, thinking about the poem, which would be published on Sunday. Perhaps a few old-timers would recognise the by-line and remember the poet who used to write for Sudha. Maybe other readers, seeing the accompanying photographs, would visit Cubbon Park to see the trees themselves.
“But can they disappear so suddenly? I was here just last week, and saw them.”
“These are flowers, Sir. They come, they go. Nothing to be done.”
I had planned to hand in the poem the following morning. I could’ve completed it at home during my time off, but I decided to write the last stanza at the park itself.
The little holiday had done me so good. I wasn’t brooding about my future at Prajavani. I was nicer to Shashank at the office. We didn’t discuss cricket, but I looked at his practice edits with kinder eyes. As always, he seemed eager to learn. In a few years, I knew he would be a fine editor.
There was almost a spring in my step as I walked to the park. I had given detailed directions to Haneef, our photographer, to find the cluster of tabebuias in Cubbon Park. The sunlight was magnificent, and I wished Haneef could have been here just now for the pictures. It would make no sense for Prajavani to publish the poem unaccompanied by the pictures, so it would have been great to get them in good light.
I couldn’t help but picture the reaction to the poem at the office: I imagined Visalakshi being pleased; it’s rare for an editor to show this kind of initiative for the paper. My peers would be full of warm praise: they always knew there was more poetry, more talent left in me.
At the park, I headed straight for the cluster. On the way, however, it seemed as if something was amiss, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As I spotted my bench from afar, I saw the gardener, Manjanna, watering the bougainvilleas, setting off that scent of wet earth. We exchanged nods. The Instagram-Reeling kids were Reeling again. The boy with the rose was the star of this production too. He made pelvic thrusts in the vicinity of a girl, who reacted shyly. Rose-boy’s other friend taught him the right way to thrust. “Not like that da, goobey—like this.”
As I sat on my bench, something now felt definitely, terribly wrong. In front of me was a tree, but there were no pink flowers. The tabebuia tree was now, simply, tree.
I battled a sinking feeling to rise to survey the rest of the cluster. There were no pink orbs anywhere. Everything was green or brown. I looked around to make sure I’m at the right spot. I looked at the young performers with confusion and spite, as though they had something to do with the disappearance of the flowers.
I walked to Manjanna and broke the wall of niceties that had so far governed our interactions.
“You know those pink trees that were growing here? What happened to them?”
“Sir, the trees are here only. Only the flowers have gone.”
“What do you mean they have gone?”
“Well, Sir, they are flowers. You can’t expect to have those flowers all year long.”
“Yes, I know they are seasonal trees. But can they disappear so suddenly? I was here just last week, and saw them.”
“These are flowers, Sir. They come, they go. Nothing to be done.” The gardener said this with a sort of finality that suggested there was no point debating any further. Yet, I was puzzled by the pace of the tree’s transformation, its rapid change.
I walked away from him and back to my bench, even though there was nothing left to do there. Haneef would roam the park all day and find nothing to photograph. I knew I should call him. I started to imagine the awkward conversation with Visalakshi. I thought of my poem, lying in my diary unfinished, where it will now probably lie for some time. The soft rustle of the flowerless tree above now seemed to mock me. Should I go to Noon Wines for a beer? Yes, I’ll call Haneef from there.
Rose-boy’s pelvic thrusts were becoming more aggressive, and it seemed he was finally doing them the right way. The kids cackled even louder now, enjoying themselves, flaunting their youth.
***
Sachin Ravikumar is a journalist based in London with roots firmly in Bangalore, India. He likes short fiction and travel writing, and his work has appeared in the Soup Magazine, an independent publication based in Mumbai, and Kitaab, a Singapore-based platform for Asian writers. You can find him on Twitter: @sachinr27 and Instagram: @sachinravikumar.
