A Lady on Grub Street

Publishers – Rupa

Pages – 368 pages

Price – Rs 395

Kamla  Mankekar was a pioneer in the Delhi newspaper world of the 1950s. A lone woman in a man’s world, her colleagues could be  suspicious and resentful. Press supervisors talked down to her. One or two aging journalists even had amorous designs on her, which came as a shock for the girl brought up in a conservative refugee family, which had fled West Punjab during Partition.  Her first employer at the Indian News Chronicle at Delhi’s Mori Gate warned her there were no toilets for women and there would be no salary either. All the same, Mankekar was willing to take up the challenge and pleaded , “I will adjust.’’

Journalism was not Mankekar’s first  choice. She had to leave Lahore before she could get her BA degree. And when she came to Delhi, she had to settle for whatever course was offered at the  refugee camp college. She opted for the  evening postgraduate classes in journalism.
Mankekar does not wear her path breaking  achievements or feminism on her sleeve. She is straight forward in recounting the problems she faced breaking into what was then an all-male bastion, but does so without  glorifying herself.  She had no godfather to even provide her with a letter of introduction and had to knock on the doors of many publishing houses in search of a break.  Finally, the Indian News Chronicle grudgingly agreed to hire her. Mankekar soon  carved out a role for herself. Besides her regular duties as a sub-editor, she reviewed books,  wrote letters to the  editor and started a column. Eventually, she was paid the princely sum of Rs 150 a  month.

In 1950, Mankekar moved on to the more prestigious Times of India newspaper. By this  time  the gutsy Mankekar  was the sole earner for her family. Apart from her sub-editing duties,  she was the paper’s film critic,  wrote  a newsletter from Delhi for the  Illustrated Weekly and outside normal hours interviewed foreign dignitaries and experts in various  fields .  After  eight years, she felt she deserved a promotion as a special correspondent. But though her editors agreed, she fell foul of the general manager JC Jain. A later generation heard Dileep Padgaonkar  pronounce that the editor of the Times is the second most powerful man in the country. But in those days, JC Jain wielded more clout than his editors. And he did not take kindly to the fact that Mankekar had bypassed him in seeking a promotion.

In 1958, she married the then resident editor of The Indian Express, DR Mankekar  (incidentally, my first editor). Jain, who did not get on with her husband, made her professional  life more difficult than ever. Soon afterwards, she was transferred to The Indian Express, Bombay. Her reports covered a wide range from consumer  protection to rural development.

Mankekar  broke new ground in other fields besides journalism. She was one of the first women to head the PR department of a major corporation, Rallis India Ltd. She worked for the Population Council of India and the All India Women’s Conference in their  fledgling  years.  She was  the first chairperson of the Delhi  State Commission for Women and a member of the censor board.

The book begins to meander and flag  a bit when Mankekar  deviates from her life story  to recall the  personalities she encountered and momentous events she witnessed.  Still,  some of her  revelations are interesting.  Though a good friend and  admirer  of the legendary editor Frank Moraes, she recalls his nickname of “boneless wonder’’ for refusing to stand up for the journalists against  the management.  She recounts  how she once heard  Tarkeshwari Sinha, the glamour girl of Parliament, compare notes with the dour Morarji Desai on whether mud packs or sandalwood soap was better  for the skin. After her husband’s death, Mankekar moved to the USA to be with her children. She wrote her memoirs at  her home in San Francisco.