'Chandan Mitra Years' Were Critical To The Success Of Many Journalists, I Am One Of Them

March 2006: Chandan Mitra hosted a conversation and breakfast at the Delhi home of then Opposition leader LK Advani, for visiting students from Columbia Journalism School | Photo by special arrangement

I first met Chandan Mitra when I was 20 years old, in 1990. Well, I saw him at a distance, walking in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj, in deep conversation with a colleague. I couldn’t muster the courage to say hello, so I waved and he waved back. This was outside the run-down offices of The Sunday Observer newspaper where he had just become the top editor, and I was a lowly proofreader, trying to make my way in journalism while studying at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University (his alma mater, too). 

Soon after that day, nothing would be the same for him, the paper or me. The Sunday Observer had just been bought by the Ambani family (long before the word “billionaire” was casually thrown around in India as it is today), and they moved all of us to fancy digs in the heart of New Delhi. The brightly-lit, well-airconditioned offices off Connaught Place had India’s most advanced publishing system, complete with inter-office email. 

Chandan took the original Sunday Observer team and added many new talented, hungry journalists. That crew worked hard, partied hard and some of those folks became lifelong friends of mine. So many of them went on to have stellar careers and will tell you that the Chandan years were critical to their success. 

I learned so much from the gang and from Chandan, especially on a youth section he helped launch called “New Generation” or “NG” for short. India’s English-speaking youngsters, newly exposed to satellite TV, eagerly devoured our stories about music, fashion and relationships. We got bags-full of mail from big cities and smaller towns. Our agony-aunt column was called “Cutts the Butcher” (after a character in Tintin comics) and written collectively by a bunch of us with some non-genteelness. Cutts routinely got letters that stated things like, “I am in love with this girl named…” but it would turn out that he’d never said a word to her. Helping those young men and women navigate a changing Indian society was one of many highlights of my Chandan years.

Chandan ran deep think pieces about the present and future of India, reflecting his intellectual curiosity and knowledge (and his PhD from Oxford). But he also revelled in successive cover stories we ran in “NG” debating the relative merits of the Tintin and Asterix series. 

He understood the value of smart marketing to the next generation and so he greenlit a project to launch a new quiz contest for Delhi’s colleges, which I got the chance to organise. 

He let me break a story about an Israeli chemical company’s secret meetings in Delhi, for which he gave me advice on how to patiently wait for reluctant sources to talk to you. This was my first scoop, before Israel-India established full diplomatic relations the following year.

But Chandan’s editing talents were highlighted most when news broke that Opposition Leader Rajiv Gandhi had been assassinated. Working at a weekly, print newspaper in 1991 was nothing like it is in today’s 24/7 media frenzy. The death was on a Tuesday night and Chandan brought us together on Wednesday to plan and execute a timely, comprehensive edition by Saturday night — covering everything from the nascent investigation to all the political angles. He let me pitch and write a story about the personal, non-political side of Gandhi’s life that I framed and still have. 

'Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines'

He’d change my life again when I asked him to write a recommendation letter for Columbia Journalism School. Instead of just dashing off something perfunctory, he wrote a detailed, 2.5-page letter full of lavish praise. I’d go on to become a professor and dean at that school and I came to know that Chandan’s letter was the only reason I was admitted. I saved that letter and have it proudly displayed on my LinkedIn profile to this day. 

I am writing this at 2 am New York time, staying awake after a request came to send in a tribute to Chandan. I am remembering the last time we met, in 2006, and it involved another Opposition Leader, BJP’s L.K. Advani. 

I had with me a group of Columbia students on a religion reporting trip to India. We had arrived at 2 am and at 8 am had breakfast and a fascinating talk by Advani at his home, hosted by Chandan, by now a BJP Rajya Sabha member. We were bleary-eyed and jetlagged, but I’ll never forget the bracing introduction to India’s current affairs that Chandan and Advani presented to us, including the memorable phrase “India has 150 million Muslims and not one of them is a member of Al Qaeda”. Not what you might expect a BJP leader to say, but Advani was trying to impress the Americans. Interestingly, when we went to visit the Islamic seminary in Deoband (the spiritual home of the Taliban), the imam there said virtually the same thing. 

I am sorry that I didn’t connect properly with Chandan in recent years or get to know his son, Kushan, who succeeded his dad as editor of The Pioneer. The last time I tried to connect was in February 2020, as you can see below, using our preferred mode of communication, Messenger. 

Chandan’s passing reminds me that we all need to be in touch with our mentors and thank them when they’re alive, not waiting till it’s too late like right now.

When "NG" was shut down in 1991 by the publisher without Chandan’s input, he helped us put together a rogue goodbye issue without telling his bosses. In it, he wrote a beautiful obituary for the section. He quoted Pablo Neruda: “Tonight I can write the saddest lines.”

So here’s to Chandan, my boss, friend and mentor, who is surely somewhere smiling right now, whiskey glass in hand, singing a Hindi film song while I write the saddest lines. 

Sree Sreenivasan (@Sree) is Marshall Loeb Professor of Digital Innovation, Stony Brook School of Communication & Journalism and Cofounder, SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association