Going beyond mere words

Journalism, for Prakash Kardaley, was not a jungle of words. Each word that went into 8220;cold print8221;, as he put it...

Journalism, for Prakash Kardaley, was not a jungle of words. Each word that went into 8220;cold print8221;, as he put it, was explosive ammunition to be deployed with military precision. For him, the editor8217;s cabin was not an ivory tower but a strategic field post from where he could map out his 8220;battle8221; strategies. He called his reporters the infantry brigade, while the features section was the 8220;artillery department8221;. The 8220;enemy8221; was anyone who perpetrates injustice.

That was Prakash Kardaley for you. He breathed fire into journalism for 40 years until he died on Sunday. For him every centimetre of the news column was too precious to be frittered away on irrelevant issues. His incessant mantra was: 8220;Relevance 8212; that8217;s prime in journalism. When you broach a story idea, ask yourself, would the reader have missed it if he had not read it?8221;

Over the last seven years, Kardaley had adopted another cause as well. He became a right-to-information activist. He saw this as an extension of relevant journalism. The fact that journalists did not use this weapon adequately distressed him, because he believed that the media could shake governments by using this right.

Kardaley disdained fancy restaurants, but he enjoyed his beer. But even the beer sessions at the charming Grand Hotel in Pune were extensions of the strategies planned for the day. As the RTI crusade came to consume his time, the beer sessions had to be sacrificed. At 65, he would devote his entire day to the new local weekly, Intelligent Pune, he had launched about four months ago. After work, he transformed himself into an ardent netizen, having founded 8216;Hum Janenge8217;, a yahoo discussion group. Today, Hum Janege is one of the most formidable netizen crusade groups in the country.

As the editor of the Pune edition of The Indian Express, he could be acerbic if journalists did not put in the required effort. But to those who did good work, even if he or she happened to be only a trainee, he would present an 8216;AVSM8217; or 8216;PVSM8217; medal, fashioned out of some waste paper! Not many know that Kardaley was once a hard-core investigative journalist who pioneered civic journalism in the country. However, 8220;soft8221; stories that touched the heart of the readers inspired him.

Twenty minutes before he died, he had given me instructions on a story to be carried. He called 20 minutes later to complain that he can only see a blanket of darkness before him. The phone then went silent. The next time I saw him he was on a stretcher. I couldn8217;t believe he had gone for ever.

The writer is executive editor, 8216;Intelligent Pune8217;, and was a colleague of Kardaley