Prism me a lie, tell me the truth: tehelka As metaphor

Madhu Trehan, Roli, Rs 595

Madhu Trehan’s documentation of the Tehelka sting is valuable in more ways than one
On the evening of March 13, 2001, the nation watched grainy, dark footage that showed how it simply took a few wads of currency notes and some enterprising reporters to expose the country’s conscience. The website Tehelka.com had broken Operation West End, the biggest undercover news story in Indian journalism. Armed with spycams and posing as arms dealers of a fictitious company, Tehelka’s reporters bribed defence officers and got them to make outrageous claims and revelations. They caught Bangaru Laxman, president of the ruling BJP, on tape accepting money and gave money to Jaya Jaitly, president of the Samata Party, in defence minister George Fernandes’s home.

Madhu Trehan picks the story from there to document the exposé , and the Kafkaesque events that followed, in this thoroughly researched book. And in doing so, she brings alive the book’s characters — the characters in Operation West End — who were part of the Indian media’s big story for a while but were soon forgotten as it moved on, looking for newer stories and newer characters.

Trehan does a great job of following each of their stories, rewinding to their pasts and tracking how the exposé altered their lives. There’s Mathew Samuel, a maverick, aspiring journalist with a “rumble in his belly” for adventure journalism; Aniruddha Bahal, the brain behind the operation, Tarun Tejpal, the media face of Tehelka; several serving and retired army officers; Jaya Jaitly and George Fernandes, and the State with its “Secret Auto Destruct System (SADS)”, as Trehan describes the way the government silently and ruthlessly went about destroying its “enemy” — with raids, planted stories and sustained interrogation. Trehan writes: “During her cross-examination, Jaya was asked 322 questions, Samuel 5,044, Bahal 5,016 and Tejpal 2,149…Doesn’t that just say it all?”

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