The Curse of Zoro

“Balls to you, my respected sir”, said
The Crocodile as he vacated the billiard table,
Conceding it to the Snake.
From Bachchoo’s Fables

This is A Tale of Three Periodicals (with acknowledgments to C. Dickens): The first is a UK publication which has gone from strength to strength since its first edition in the ’60s when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister and said in a loose moment that the rise and fall of international economies was controlled by “the Gnomes of Zurich”. The satirical fortnightly, Private Eye, then adopted an invented, mythical super-editor called Lord Gnome. A satirical magazine which believes in a no-holds-barred policy, which scrutinises all forms of public misdemeanour and takes no prisoners, is bound to be mercilessly sued and it was. But the Eye exercises a certain vigilance and when the people who have publicly made themselves enemies of the Eye come to any grief in their personal or public lives, the magazine gloatingly publishes the news of their dishonour, disgrace or demise under the headline The Curse of Gnome.
Many a person — lawyer, politician, editor, self-important fool has dared to invoke the curse and provoke the gnomes who presumably work, behind the supernatural purdah for Lord Gnome and many have come somewhere else to grief.
My second periodical in the tale is, or was, a magazine called Sunday published from Calcutta in the ’90s.
I was at the time working as a bureaucrat for a television channel in the UK called Channel 4. As a commissioning editor it was my job to commission, finance, edit, supervise and bring programmes to the screen. One of my colleagues, another commissioning editor, commissioned a producer called Tariq Ali (who happens to be my personal friend) and a distinguished Left-wing writer called Christopher Hitchens to do a documentary assessing the reputation of Mother Teresa. The documentary alleged that Mother Teresa got money from Enver Hoxa of Albania and from Papa Doc of Haiti and it interviewed English women who had worked for her charitable foundation and alleged that she was unconcerned with the suffering of, for instance, an old vagrant who had sought shelter and whose appendix had burst. The interviewees alleged that Mother Teresa had refused to call in doctors who may have saved the man’s life and concentrated instead on saving his soul.
These were obviously dissident voices and allegations based on anecdotes with a perspective that valued life on earth more than prospects elsewhere.
The periodical Sunday, edited at the time by Vir Sanghvi, subsequently published a vicious article which said that if anyone examined the provenance of this programme on Mother Teresa they would find it emanated from the champagne socialist Tariq Ali and from some form of vermin called Farrukh Dhondy. The article didn’t use that phrase in describing me, but came close. It alleged that I had obtained my job at Channel 4 through a fraudulent pretence that I was a Ugandan Asian. (Why would that qualify anyone to be employed at Channel 4?) It went on to say that I had acquired possession of some houses belonging to the British government by some unspecified process of fraud. (I have never owned any houses at all, still don’t and the British government doesn’t hand out houses to anyone legally or fraudulently). It went on to say something about my sexual life and specified some statistics which were inaccurate and libellous to a man of my morality and prowess.
The article, using nasty and abusive words, unworthy of a bhadralok publication, written by someone called Dilip Thakore, was brought to the notice of the Channel 4 lawyers who decided to sue the publication and its editor, Mr Sanghvi, for libel.
The writ went out and Sunday’s lawyers capitulated immediately, begged for mercy, agreed to print an unconditional apology saying they were wrong in every entail and detail and would also pay me £10,000. I weighed up the matter and decided that it was a good price for my existing reputation. I was even about to write Mr Sanghvi a note telling him that there was a lot more he could say about me and Channel 4’s producers and that Mr Thakore should be commissioned to put what he thought of these in print. Unfortunately, Channel 4’s lawyers advised against. Spoil sports!
Now it seems Mr Sanghvi’s phone calls to lobbyists and others have been tapped and the Hindustan Times, the third of the periodicals of this tale, to which Mr Sanghvi has moved, is being questioned as to the independence of its editorial line and the opinions expressed in its columns. Are both for sale?
This is not an allegation. Just a question. Several of my well wishers, on hearing of Mr Sanghvi’s discomfiture, asked me whether the Curse of Zoro had struck. I had to say I wouldn’t venture to express an opinion.
Nevertheless, it does make one think. On a par with The Curse of Gnome, there is, they tell me, though I am not in the least inclined to believe it, a Curse of Zoro which avenges any affront, insult, libel or lying and cheating challenge to any writer, poet or criminal of the Zoroastrian faith.
I have tried very hard, verbally and not on any “blog” (because like Dr Johnson, I don’t write for any reason except being paid to do it) to persuade my followers that Mr Sanghvi has probably not been struck by The Curse of Zoro, but is merely the victim of people in other publications who are envious of his great success and undoubted uprightness and probity.
I have read his defence on the Internet and must say his arguments seem as though they are the product of an editorial mind that relies on fact and not on invention. They strike me as the defences of a man who knows when another has obtained the ownership of houses from the British government by processes of fraud — perhaps he even has phone-tapped tapes which prove the point.
So our tale of three periodicals moves to where it has to contrast two linguistic idioms: the English, when they want to emphasise someone’s error painfully, hurtfully, say “rub his nose in it”. We Indians, as a mark of someone’s disgrace say “his nose has been cut off”.
Obviously, one can’t rub someone’s nose in it if it’s been cut off.