I was advised to become a player or remain easy meat: Vinod Mehta

With almost three decades experience in the media, Vinod Mehta has been called the most-sacked editor, being asked to leave The Independent and The Pioneer. He writes about all of this and other highs and lows in his career in his recently released memoir, Lucknow Boy:

“All around me I saw mediocre editors flourish. They possessed minimal competence but were adept at intra-office intrigue. I was advised to become a ‘player’ or remain ’easy meat’ for the plotting and scheming inescapable in any office situation.”

[caption id=“attachment_139228” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=" “Once I decided to be brutally candid, once I wasn’t fucking around with my memory, the writing came quite easily.” Firstpost"]  [/caption] Mehta founded and served as editor-in-chief of Debonair in 1974, was the founder-editor of India’s first Sunday paper, The Sunday Observer, edited the now defunct The Independent, and The Pioneer’s Delhi edition. Currently the editor of Outlook Magazine, he oversaw the Radiagate expose, that led to the snowballing of the 2G scam — the biggest, most-high profile saga of corruption. In his memoir, he writes about his boyhood days in Lucknow, his evolving convictions, Outlook magazine and a Swiss daughter whom he has never met. From having started as a leftist, moving to centre-left liberal, he has finally settled as a believer in the free market, he says in a Tehelka interview where he talks about the memoir. [caption id=“attachment_139231” align=“alignright” width=“140” caption=“Book cover”]  [/caption] The biggest challenge he says in the interview was “not to edit your memory.” “Once I decided to be brutally candid, once I wasn’t fucking around with my memory, the writing came quite easily,” he says. And the hardest detail to part with, he says, was the bit about his Swiss lover who decided to have their child even though he did not want her. He has never met his daughter. He doesn’t even know where she lives. He writes:

“I have often tried to imagine her and in this reverie I have prayed that perhaps through some happy accident our paths might cross. It hasn’t happened yet. I have been married twice, but no children. The only child I have is a stranger to me and lives in a faraway land. I don’t have many regrets in life and generally I have not been a ‘bastard’ with women. On this occasion, I was. I don’t expect to be forgiven.”

Read excerpts from his book here. Read the rest of Tehelka interview here.