Reporter's Diary

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Imagine a situation where the two essential ingredients for creating a credible news menu are missing. Access and information were both conspicuous by their absence when over 300 journalists descended last July on the city of the Taj Mahal. I was on assignment for the India Today Group to report the Indo-Pak Summit for the magazine, Aaj Tak, our 24-hour news channel, and thenewpapertoday.com, India's first daily on the web. Such an assignment should have been a challenge and a delight for any journalist. Instead, it turned out to be a long nightmare. It was like covering a daynight cricket match when the floodlights had failed. At the end of the 36-hour long diplomatic acrobatics, neither side could claim an emphatic victory. But Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf walked away with the Man of the Media award.

THINKING LOUD: The General and his Begum at the Taj Mahal

It is strange how the dictator from across the border and his media-savvy team read the minds of the news-starved journalistic fraternity much better than the establishment in democratic India. In the absence of any regular briefing or even inspired leaks by the Indian Government, it was an open season for the visitors: they planted on the Indian and foreign media imaginary details about the discussions that took place between the two sides. Of course, it was Musharraf himself who led from the front. He invited India's top journalists for a sumptuous five-course breakfast and a 50-minute discourse on Indo-Pak relations. We were all ushered into his breakfast chambers in Raj Vilas hotel as if we were his state guests in our own country. Some among us were so impressed with him that we even forgot to do the journalist's primary duty which was to ask inconvenient questions. Instead, we joined him in running down India. It was an informal breakfast meet, but we all knew that at least one TV camera was rolling-and that the images were beamed out live, much to the embarrassment of the Indian hosts who had presumed that the TV camera was merely recording the General's breakfast meeting.

That perhaps was the high point of the three days and nights at Agra. Musharraf's media team comprising over a dozen officials drawn from the military and diplomatic corps was always mingling with us, passing on bits and pieces of what was purported to be information.

MEDIA MEN: Musharraf, Jaswant Singh and Vajpayee pose for readers

Some of us wer so impressed with the General that we forget a journalist's primary duty: to ask needling question

It wasn't as if the Indian team was not competent enough to counter Pakistan's media blitz. It was just that the babus who were perpetually looking for signals found none coming from their political bosses who had locked themselves in a hotel. Expecting Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to invite us for breakfast with him was like waiting for snowfall in Delhi in June. He was simply not available. Five of his senior cabinet colleagues were in Agra with him but they had been advised to avoid us. Any journalistic enterprise was treated as an act of war against the establishment. Yet I took a risk. Using my contacts, I managed to enter the Jaypee Palace lobby shortly before Vajpayee and his team were to leave for a lunch meeting with the Pakistani team on the second day. The SPG team at the hotel's entry was as usual friendly yet firm. I managed to pin down a few officials. But within minutes, I was virtually declared an intruder. An official in the PMO who was till recently a journalist ordered the SPG to throw me out. And the same SPG official who had allowed me in with a smile a few minutes earlier was seething with rage. I was ordered to leave the premises or face the consequences. They even shot down requests by Jai Prakash Gaur, the hotel owner, to let me accompany him to his room. I walked out, but was determined to have the last laugh. And I did. For within minutes, I was back in the hotel, in a room adjacent to the one where Vajpayee and his team were having lunch. For almost an hour, I reported live for Aaj Tak from there. A lot of people, including securitymen, asked me how I managed it. I am not saying. Who knows, I may have to do it again.

It's strange how people you know so well shun you when you need them most. I knew most of the officials in the PMO as also Vajpayee's foster son-in-law. And they all carried their cell phones with them. But suddenly I found that my calls were being rejected. The hotel's telephone exchange itself was disconnected and the PMO functioned with the help of a special 25-line exchange brought from Delhi whose numbers were known only to key officials and ministers. On the other hand, the Pakistanis freely handed out their cell phone numbers and were ever ready to talk. At the end of Day Two when President Musharraf flew out of India without even a ceremonial sendoff, it was clear that the talks had not just failed, but the summit was a pr disaster for India. At noon on Day One, I had announced on Aaj Tak that the talks were headed for failure. It was no hunch. My reading was based on information I had gathered from contacts at the lower levels. I was scoffed at then. Small mercy that I wasn't blamed for Musharraf walking away with the propaganda honours.