Bye Allen

Early July: Times of India Bangalore office internship. Metro Desk, said the Resident Editor. And I walked out scared on those neat white tiles, strutted past corporate cubicles spreading away left and right. I had seen this Metro desk chief before! College Fest. A journalism veteran called him cynical for his blunt views on market vs journalism.

A few days on at this reporters' corner: A better dressed and westernised fellow intern found favour with this man over me - the khadi-clad bore. Am I doomed? I wondered. Playing musical chairs to grab reporters' PCs . Stuck to keying in City Scan and events column. Promoted to typing the City Briefs at times!

Come Sunday: a neglect assignment. Which overstressed journo would want to wake up early on a Sunday, rush to Press Club for an outdoor story plant pick -up? But for me, finally there was a story to do! Not typing in Events!

Vipassana meditation camp. That was the story. Ten days of silence at a outside Bangalore on Kanakapura Road! We were there on the final day for some publicity to that `cause'.

Two days later, chief quick scanned my finished story on the PC, his signature wrist holding face style. Will it get past chief at all! Wondered a battered me.

`Who wrote this?' asked Mr Chief, aloud and rather curiously.

`It was me.' I hid back into the borrowed cubicle.

`It's good dear! Was it really you?'

`Yeah. We wrote it!' Co-Byline justice! He knew this story was mine. Thank God! `So you discovered me!' I muttered to myself.

By now in my head, he came to personify all of Bangalore journalism. Flamboyant. That swagger stood out. He was all over the place, and at all times of the day! As if he lived at the TOI office! And how he wore his heart up his sleeve! Colleagues calming him down when he yelled and shouted expletives or fought his seniors for his team! How he teased that sub-editor with her `flying nest -like' hair so openly she gave him a smirk and escaped into those back desks! Or pushed interns all over the city to write on and do stories without fear!

My `downmarket' dress sense obviously kept this celebrity scribe off! Vipassana meditation story won him over. `It's good!' came singing into my years thrice over the next hour! And it got published the following Sunday. I got a couple of bylines more, but this one gave me that `arrived' feel so much! He sure had that eye for quality!

A bunch of us interns went out for coffee and lunch with him at eateries outside S & B towers. Arguments over issues, his being called names by rivals, those marketing strategies of Times he loyally defended, or his arguing against my joining dream college - Asian College! I differed with him a great deal on women turning glamour dolls to sell newspapers. Or about why he was being so sexist. But I was glad it did not invite vengeance. He seemed to take it all rather playfully. He was not idealist material. A fun-lover who egged you with pep-talk, he was no doubt.

Through years that followed, I've heard many adjectives and anecdotes around this popular boss. From his well-wishers and detractors alike. Flamboyant - the must word. Amusing. `Colour' - a convenient label by a fellow political correspondent. Colour meant he and his stories were colourful!

I was not surprised either, that during his tough times and publication changes later, he did not recognise me when he walked into Express Library on some reference work. Reporters rarely remember interns. Once he remembered, he chatted away. And hinted at how he felt victimised by the paper he lived for.

Am sure he forgot me and my colleague who saw him off from our Reporter's Desk aisle soon after he left. Something in the way he spoke suggested, he wanted peace.

How does one react when those letters RIP stare out against his name on Facebook? It can't be. He is not old! Is it a prank? Googling confirmed it. Senior Journalist Allen Mendonca Dead. Age 49.

Obits have flown back and forth on blogs last four days. Newspapers reluctantly carried quickie obits too. His wife reportedly sounded out to his detractors that they did not break his spirit. He died peacefully, in sleep. How we die often defines how we've lived!

Bye Allen. You may not have known me. I have not subscribed to you or your style always. A picture pinned on your cubicle wall then sums up my best memory of you though. Ale splashing out of a wine glass and you revelling in it. The now defunct fortnightly Bangalore magazine Family had carried those pics. You loved that picture. Me will remember you best from that picture.